


Lego House

by MidnightStorm6593



Series: Lego House [2]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Mentions of Tyler/Elena, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-13 12:00:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 35,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2149971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidnightStorm6593/pseuds/MidnightStorm6593
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a stranger shows up at Bonnie's door late one night, her and Damon's fate becomes entwined in the strangest of ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Bonnie sighed, as she clipped her up to keep it out of her sweat-damp face. It was summer nights like these that made her regret ever letting it grow back. It was late at night and she was currently pouring over registration information for medical school.

After spending four years on where they had been sent to when the Other Side collapsed, Bonnie and Damon had finally made it back to Mystic Falls.

The first surprise they got when they returned was that the same amount of time that had passed on the Other Side had also passed in Mystic Falls. Bonnie had assumed that there would have been a difference because they had literally been zapped into a different dimension, but she was grateful to have been proven wrong.

Other surprises came in the form of how much things had changed in Mystic Falls. Stefan and Caroline had started a steady relationship not long after Bonnie and Damon disappeared. Elena somehow had a fling with Tyler that turned into a steady relationship (and, boy, did no one see that coming) and they both had decided to move to Denver about a year later. They were still happily together and Elena was getting ready to begin her residency to become a pediatric doctor. Jeremy had apparently refused to leave with Elena at first, but after about two years of Bonnie being gone, he had moved to Denver with Elena and Tyler.

Being on the Other Side had been a different experience, too. Her and Damon had literally been zapped to some alternate universe where no supernatural things existed and neither one of them had had any powers (although, Bonnie had lost her powers long before getting sucked into the whole other dimension). They had spent four years in a nice, sleepy town that was somewhat similar to Mystic Falls (minus all the ridiculous pomp and pageantry that had always permeated Mystic Falls).

Yet, one morning, Bonnie and Damon had woken up in the woods and they knew they had been returned to Mystic Falls. They never did figure out how or why that happened. Still, though, they had come back, Bonnie with her witch powers fully intact and Damon with his vampire powers, and after three years, there was no sign of them getting sucked back into whatever dimension they had landed in.

When Tyler, Elena, and Jeremy caught wind of Bonnie and Damon's return, they drove all the way back to Mystic Falls to see for themselves.

Bonnie could still remember the awkwardness of having that whole conversation with Jeremy.

"I don't know what to say," he had admitted. "I didn't want to give up on you, but…"

"It's okay," Bonnie had assured him. Caroline had already broken the news to her Jeremy had been in a relationship with a girl he met at college in Denver for two years and Bonnie had been okay with that. "I didn't expect you to wait at all. I mean, me and Damon were literally blinked out of existence, so it's not like we ever expected to return. And you know I'd never want to put your life on hold for me ever." Pause. "Besides, it's four years since I've been gone. Things change,  _people_ change."

They had parted amicably with a hug and then he, Tyler, and Elena had returned to Denver to continue with their lives. And Bonnie was genuinely all happy for them.

Damon had taken Elena being with someone else surprisingly well. He didn't go on a rampage, or turn off his emotions, or anything. Instead, he reconnected with Alaric and Enzo they had formed the bromance trio from hell. And he had even managed to repair his relationship with Stefan.

He still drank his weight in liquor every day (sometimes even more), still womanized, and could still be the world's biggest jackass. However, the time on the Other Side had changed him (it changed  _both_ of them) and it seemed like after spending over a hundred and sixty years on this earth, Damon was finally getting himself together.

"So what are you gonna do now?" Caroline had asked Bonnie when she returned and the dust had mostly settled.

"I don't know…I guess it's time I finally got my life on track, give it the old college try or whatever."

And that was exactly what she did. Okay, so going straight back to college hadn't exactly been the most glamorous or exciting thing to do, but it was  _normal._

At first she hadn't been sure what she even wanted to do with her life. She knew she enjoyed nature and creating different potions and herbal remedies.

That's when she discovered naturopathy. It wasn't a large field, but it still required a medical degree. Plus, it allowed her to use her homeopathic skills and still help people.

She could still remember Elena to beware of organic chemistry when she told the pretty brunette that she was going to pursue pre-med and then med school. Elena hadn't been lying when she said it wasn't easy, but she had made it through, done well on her MCAT, and got accepted to some decent medical schools.

She had decided on a medical school only about an hour from Mystic Falls. However, Bonnie hadn't quite decided whether she wanted to make the hour commute back and forth almost every day or if she should go find an apartment that was closer.

A sudden pounding on her front door almost made her jump a foot in the air.

 _Who the hell would be knocking at this time of night?_ Bonnie wondered.

There was no way it was Stefan, Damon, or Caroline; Stefan would have called before coming over and Damon and Caroline would have just walked right through the door without even bothering to knock.

Frowning, Bonnie got up from the kitchen table and slowly made her way towards the front door. The insistent pounding continued.

There may not have been any threat in Mystic Falls for years now, but that didn't make Bonnie any less paranoid.

_Thank God I got my magic back when we returned from the Other Side. It's nice being able to defend myself again._

Bonnie carefully twisted the doorknob, slowly opening the door. The boy standing on her front porch looked like he couldn't have been more than eighteen, if even that.

"Oh, thank God you're home," he said in obvious relief. "I really need your help."

"What happened? Did your car breakdown?" Bonnie asked, still tense. She was concerned for the boy, but the second vampires and other creatures became a part of her life, she was automatically more wary of any stranger that supposedly came looking for help.

"Huh?" The boy replied, clearly confused. "Oh, no, I didn't mean that kind of help," he replied quickly. "I meant  _magical_ help. See…I'm…ah, damn, how do I put this? Uh…I'm from the future and I'm in a lot of trouble."


	2. Chapter 2

"See…I'm…ah, damn, how do I put this? Uh…I'm from the future and I'm in a lot of trouble."

"You're what?" Bonnie asked dumbly.

"I know it sounds crazy," the boy said quickly, "But I swear I'm telling the truth."

Time travel? Really? Then again…considering that she and Damon had literally traveled to another dimension and back, could anything really be that far-fetched anymore?

The boy, sensing her skepticism, continued, "If it counts at all, we're distant cousins in the future. My name is Dominic."

Before she could respond, he reached out to touch her arm. She jerked back, still not trusting him, but from the brief second he had touched her, she had gotten the same feeling that she'd had from Lucy all those years. The feeling of familiarity, trust, truth… _family._

"You really are telling the truth, aren't you?"

He breathed a visible sigh of relief.

"Okay, I'm going to let you in my house, so you can explain yourself. However, I'm going to call some friends over first because, judging from the headache I'm already getting, this is not I story I'm going to want to hear twice."

She stepped back so that he could enter the house then led him to the kitchen, motioning for him to take a seat at the table. She picked her cell phone up from the pile of papers she had dropped it on top of and speed-dialed Caroline.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Care, uh, are Stefan and Damon home, by any chance?"

"Yeah…why?" Caroline asked, automatically suspicious.

"Just get over here now if you can, please," Bonnie replied.

"Okay, you're scaring me a little. Is everything okay?"

"I'm fine, but there's a bit of a problem. Trust me, you're going to want to hear this in person."

"You still don't trust me," Dominic said when Bonnie hung up the phone.

"You seem like you're being honest and after some of the stuff I've seen, time travel probably shouldn't seem that far-fetched. I've learned to be cautious, though," Bonnie explained, leaning against the kitchen sink and crossing her arms over her chest.

He nodded.

"Although, there is something I'm curious about: If we're cousins—or distant cousins or whatever—why'd you come here to me of all people? Why not someone you're close to? Or, better yet, if you're from the future, why didn't you just go to me then?"

"Well, I did," Dominic replied. "You helped me get here."

_Huh._

"And your parents?" Bonnie asked. "No offense, but you seem kind of young."

Oh, God. Since when did she sound so  _old?_

"I'm sixteen. And my parents, they're uh…they're not in the picture."

"I'm sorry," Bonnie replied sincerely.

He nodded and they fell into an awkward silence.

"So, you sufficiently freaked me out over the phone," Caroline said as she walked through Bonnie's front door, Stefan and Damon in tow. "What the hell is going on?"

"This," Bonnie gestured to Dominic, "Is Dominic. He's apparently from the future."

"What?"

"You've got to be kidding me," Damon scoffed.

"That was my reaction at first, too," Bonnie replied, "But given all the weird stuff we've experienced before… Also, I didn't believe him when he first told me, but when he touched me, I could tell that he's related to me."

"It's a witch thing," Bonnie added upon seeing Caroline's confused expression.

"We're distant cousins three of four times removed," Dominic said in response to Damon's incredulous look.

"Look, why don't we at least hear what he has to say?" Stefan suggested.

Bonnie nodded in agreement while Stefan and Caroline still looked apprehensive.

"Where to start? It probably goes without saying that I'm here because the future is bad. Really bad."

Damon scoffed and rolled his eyes and Bonnie hushed him.

"This group of witches—they call themselves the Purists," he spat out the word like it was poison in his mouth, "They've taken it upon themselves to supposedly maintain the balance of nature, to right supernatural wrongs."

"Could you be a little less cryptic and actually get to the point?" Damon asked impatiently.

"They've been systematically wiping out any supernatural creature and even some humans that they deem unworthy of living."

"And I'm guessing that this isn't just one crazy coven, judging by the fact that you time traveled because of it," Bonnie says heavily.

"Yeah. They gained enough support from other covens and…it's really bad."

It didn't take a genius to figure out that that must have been a massive understatement.

"I came here to try and stop all of this before it actually happens, but they're powerful witches and I'm going to need some help."

"And why should we trust you or even believe a word that you're saying?" Damon demanded to know.

"Damon," Bonnie says. At first she had been hesitant at believing him, but one look at Dominic, and Bonnie was pretty sure he was speaking the truth. He had that world-wary look of someone who's been fighting a losing battle for too long—she and all her friends had the same look years ago when it was one world-ending disaster after another with no end in sight.

"I risked  _a lot_ to get back here," Dominic snaps, glaring at Damon. "Time travel is  _extremely_ dangerous. There's so many things that could go wrong. I could have jeopardized my own existence, the existence of countless others, and who the hell knows what else?"

"Okay," Caroline pipes up, "I admit that this all sounds really,  _really_ crazy, but, I mean, we've dealt with some pretty weird stuff before, so shouldn't we at least give him the benefit of the doubt? I mean, if there's even a chance that these crazy witches are going to start wiping people out because they feel like it, we should at least consider looking into it."

Damon still looked skeptical.

"There's something I'm wondering, though," Stefan said. "Why did these witches suddenly decide that they needed to commit mass murder to balance the world out?"

Dominic shook his head. "I don't know. I guess they just had some warped world view that they took to the extreme and their leader decided she had enough power to make it a reality."

Damon's eyes narrowed. "You're lying."

Dominic's lips thinned and he let out a frustrated sigh. "Look, I don't want to keep things from you. Especially when I need you guys to trust me, but like I said, time travel is dangerous. I'm afraid that if I say too much or if I say the wrong things, then I'll majorly screw something up."

"How convenient," Damon replied, still scowling.

"Alright, look, it's really late," Bonnie interrupted. If this kept going, she wouldn't be surprised if Damon and Dominic came to blows. "I don't know about you guys, but I for one need some sleep." She turned to Dominic. "You can have one of the spare bedrooms here for now."

"You're seriously going to let him stay here with you?" Damon asked incredulously.

"He's from the future, Damon—"

"Or so he says," Damon interrupted.

"I'm not putting him out on the street when he obviously has nowhere else to go," Bonnie finished, ignoring Damon.

"He can stay in the boardinghouse," Stefan said quickly, attempting to diffuse the argument. "There's more than enough room there and there'll be the three of us to keep an eye on him."

"I don't need anyone to keep an eye on me," Dominic said.

" _And_ I'm a witch," Bonnie reminded them. "I can take care of myself."

"Witches." Damon rolled his eyes.

* * *

"Hey, Caroline said, knocking softly on the doorframe of the room in the boardinghouse that Dominic was currently settling in.

"Hey," he replied, surprised to see her.

"Look, don't take Damon too personally. That's just how he is."

Dominic snorted. "I know."

"You know Damon in the future?" Caroline asked, surprised.

"I've heard enough stories about him."

Caroline hummed, not entirely convinced.

"You don't seem as suspicious of me," Dominic commented.

"Well, I can't honestly say that I trust you one hundred percent, but Bonnie seems to trust you well enough and it looks like you've been some rough times. And like I said before, I think we need to give you the benefit of the doubt because the future you described sounds pretty scary."

Pause.

"Anyway, just let us know if you need anything," Caroline said.

Dominic nodded. "Thanks."

* * *

"He found a way to time travel," Natalie said as she barged into the dimly lit room.

"Well, that is a problem," Jacqueline mused, looking up from her grimoire. "Although, if we're lucky, he'll mess up the timeline so much he's not even born."

Natalie could all but see the light bulb all but go off in Jacqueline's mind.

"I take it you've just gotten an idea?"

"Well, if the brat found a way to time travel, it shouldn't be a problem for us to find a way to do so as well. And then we could stop him from even existing to become a problem in the first place."


	3. Chapter 3

"Okay," Bonnie said the next morning. She was sitting in the Salvatore kitchen with Stefan, Caroline, Damon, and Damon and a huge mug of coffee in front of her. "What exactly is your plan?" She asked Dominic. "Other than giving us the heads up, anyway."

"Well, really, I was just planning on targeting the main leaders and taking them out one by one. They're very powerful, so it wouldn't be easy, but I figured with some help and the element of surprise…"

"Great plan," Damon replied sarcastically. "Very clever."

Bonnie suppressed a groan. It was way too early in the morning for bickering.

"Okay, let's back up some. What do you know about these witches? Names? Locations?" Bonnie asked.

"The main leader is a woman named Jacqueline Chambers," Dominic replied. "Along with her sister, Natalie."

Bonnie's eyes widened.

"Okay, I don't like that look on your face," Damon said to Bonnie. "That look never means anything good. Ever."

"I think I know her," Bonnie replied with a frown. "She's a pre-med student that's about a year behind me, class-wise." She quickly pulled out her phone and brought up Jacqueline's page on Facebook and showed it to Dominic.

"Well, she's nearly seventeen years younger, but that's definitely her," Dominic confirmed. "I never knew that you actually knew her…"

"Great. So now that we know—"

"Damon, sit down," Stefan interrupted, giving Damon what everyone had dubbed 'the look.'

"I don't know her too well. She's only been in like two of my classes, but she's always been so nice…" Bonnie said with a frown. "Do you really have no idea why she would just start going berserk and killing different supernaturals?" She asked Dominic.

"No," Dominic replied, becoming very interested in his coffee. "It all started just right before I was born."

"Okay, but obviously one person—or two, I guess, since you said her sister was involved—could do that much damage. There's no way that they wouldn't have already been killed if it was just them," Stefan pointed out.

"Because, like I said last night, she gained support from multiple witch covens.  _Powerful_ covens."

"Well, maybe now that we have a heads up we can just keep an eye out and if she makes a move, we nip it in the bud," Caroline suggested hopefully.

"Yeah, because we're that lucky," Damon replied, rolling his eyes.

"I just keep thinking that they key to all of this is whatever makes Jacqueline snap," Bonnie said, tapping her fingers on the table thoughtfully. "Whatever it is, it's  _big._ "

"And I have a pretty good feeling that a certain someone knows exactly what it is, but won't tell us," Damon said, giving Dominic a hard glare.

"So, how many times do things have to be repeated to you before you actually get it? I. Don't. Know," Dominic snapped. "And, yes, there are certain things I'm keeping from you because, like I already said, it could  _massively_ screw everything up. Time travel is extremely volatile. I even went about a month more back than I had intended."

"Alright," Bonnie said, hoping to get them back on track and diffuse yet another argument brewing between Dominic and Damon. "So when exactly does Jacqueline start becoming a problem?"

"Well, given what day it is, I'd say about anywhere from two to five months from now."

"That's a pretty big gap," Stefan said.

"Like I said, I wasn't even born yet when all this started happening, so…Anyway, it starts with Jacqueline and her sister. Then, they gain support from a nearby coven and it continues to grow from there."

'The easiest thing to do would be to completely eliminate Jacqueline as a potential problem before she actually becomes one," Bonnie admitted. "But she hasn't technically done anything yet…it just doesn't feel right."

"For once we actually have the upper hand, Bonnie," Damon pointed out.

"Believe it or not, I actually agree with him on that one," Dominic added.

"Okay, well," Bonnie said, standing up. "I'm going to try doing this my way."

"But—" Dominic tried to say.

"You came back here because you wanted my help," Bonnie interrupted. "And I will help you, but on  _my_ terms." She left the kitchen and began heading towards the front door, Dominic hot on her heels.

"Look, if you'd seen the future then you'd understand—"

He was cut short when Bonnie opened the front door to reveal a woman standing on the front porch.

"There you are," the woman said to Bonnie.

There was a glint of metal and Dominic yelled out before quickly pushing Bonnie out of the way. He let out a sharp cry as the dagger the woman was holding, which had been meant for Bonnie, plunged deeply into his shoulder.

"Bonnie!" Caroline cries out as she runs into the room, Stefan and Damon following closely behind her. The woman easily subdued the three of them with painful aneurisms.

Pushing herself up off the floor slightly, Bonnie quickly lifts a hand up, sending the woman clear across the Salvatore's massive front property. When she pulled herself up and looked out the still-open front door, Bonnie saw that the woman had completely vanished.

"Dominic," Bonnie said, quickly crouching down to check on him.

"It's fine," he groaned, pulling the dagger out of his shoulder and letting it drop to the floor before sitting up.

"Fine? You just got stabbed!" Bonnie exclaimed. "You need some vampire blood—" she stopped in her tracks as she saw that his wound had already started to heal on its own. "You're healing."

"That's not a witch power," Damon said, coming to stand near them. "Just what the hell are you really?"

"I am a witch," Dominic replied, climbing to his feet. "Well, half-witch."

"And the other half?"

The teenager remained silent.

"Let me guess," Damon replied dryly. "You're going to keep being more cryptic because oh no! You just might screw up a future that's already screwed up."

"That was Jacqueline," Bonnie said, diverting the topic once again. She was definitely curious as to what Dominic was, but she thought that that was an issue to be pressed at another time.

"Yeah, from the future," Dominic replied with a heavy sigh. "Dammit! How did she figure it out?! Do you have any idea how long it took for me to figure it out?!"

"Well, this just got a lot more complicated," Caroline said from the other side of the room.

"She was specifically targeting me," Bonnie said.

"No, she wasn't. You just happened to have the misfortune to open the door," Dominic told her.

"No. She looked me dead in the eye and said, 'there you are.' If that's not a clear indication that it's me she's after, then I don't know what is," Bonnie replied with slightly narrowed eyes. "Which leads me to believe that whatever made Jacqueline snap, has something to do with me. Something that I did…or will do."

"Trust me, it's a lot more complicated than that," Dominic said. He moved to sit down on the couch.

"Really? Because you earlier you kept insisting that you had no idea what made her go completely psycho," Damon snapped.

Bonnie noticed that Dominic's color seemed to be going more and more off.

"You're not looking too good," she said, concerned.

"The dagger was poisoned. It's one of Jacqueline's concoctions made especially for witches" Dominic replied. "It won't kill me since I'm only half-witch," he added hastily upon seeing Bonnie start to look panicked. "It'll burn out of my system by the end of the day, but it'll hurt like hell."

"Well, since you're not dying, why don't we get back to how you're getting caught in your lies," Damon replied.

As Stefan watched from the other side of the room while Dominic and Damon bickered and Bonnie tried to mediate between them, everything that rubbed him the wrong way about the time traveler suddenly seemed to click in his head.

"I think I just figured out what exactly he's hiding from us," Stefan said very, very quietly to Caroline.

"Really? What?"

"I'll let you know when I actually get the truth from him for sure."

* * *

She had been hoping to catch the Bennett witch alone. She's sure she wouldn't have had a problem killing her then. A simple nick would have been enough for the poison to do its job.

Jacqueline would have stood a better chance if she had been able to bring Natalie along with her. The spell for time travel was too complicated, too risky for her to have wanted her sister to come with, though.

Thankfully, she already had a plan B.

She appeared just outside the old apartment she used to rent while she was still attending college for her undergraduate degree.

After all, who better to help her out than herself?

"Have I got quite the story for you," she said as the younger version of herself opened up her apartment door upon her knocking.


	4. Chapter 4

Dominic's conditioned worsened through the day along with Bonnie's worry. He hadn't been able to keep anything solid or liquid down and he had broken out in a fever.

"Here, see if you can keep this down," Bonnie told Dominic, she pulled the cool, damp cloth from his forehead to freshen it up and handed him a mug of warm tea and helping him to sit up a bit. "It's peppermint, which should help to settle your stomach if you can keep it down."

"Thanks," he said weakly, reaching for the tea with a shaky hand.

Bonnie moved into the bathroom to run the cloth under cool water.

She still had half a mind to drag him off to  _Mystic Falls Memorial_ to be treated, but how exactly would she explain it to the staff?

They couldn't exactly say he was given some unknown, deadly witch poison. Not to mention, that he wouldn't have a valid ID or valid insurance since he technically exist yet.

Granted, they could compel the staff, but with their luck that would come back to bite them all in the ass. Still, though, Bonnie decided that if he didn't get better within the next few hours, she'd haul him in regardless of what he told her.

"You're worrying again," Damon told her as she draped the cool cloth around his neck this time.

"Well, some psycho witch from the future wants me dead for reasons that you refuse to tell me and just to complicate things even more, I actually know her in the present. Oh, and just to top things off, you're poisoned and you said you'd get better, but you only seem to be getting worse. So, yeah, I'm pretty damn worried right now."

"I told you it gets worse and then it gets better. It's not the first time this has happened to me."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Bonnie asked skeptically. "Because it really, really doesn't."

"Hey," Caroline interrupted, softly knocking on the doorframe. "How're things?"

"He's managed to keep the tea down so far, so hopefully that's a good sign," Bonnie replied, turning to face Caroline.

"Why don't you get some sleep?" Caroline suggested. "Although, I think you should stay here tonight. It'd make me feel a lot better to know you're not alone after everything that's happened today."

"I wasn't planning on leaving, anyway," Bonnie responded. "I want to be just in case Dominic takes a turn for the worse."

"I told you I'll be fine," Dominic groaned from his place on the bed.

"Yeah, well, I'll believe it when I actually see it because you're far from fine right now," Bonnie shot back, fixing Dominic with a pointed look. "I'll go crash in the empty room next door," she said to Caroline. "If he seems to get worse, come get me?"

"Of course," Caroline answered, ignoring Dominic's grumbled protest. "Oh, hey, by the way, where's Damon?"

"Out drinking with Enzo."

"You're kidding. After what happened today?"

"Yeah, well, you know them. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Alaric joined them to complete the bro-triangle from hell," Bonnie said dryly. "In fact, I'd bet that right about now Enzo and Alaric are drunkenly fighting for Damon's affection."

Caroline giggled and shook her head.

After Bonnie said goodnight to both her and Dominic, she moved to the other room. Once Bonnie was gone, the blonde informed Dominic that she'd be downstairs and would hear him if he needed her.

"So," Caroline said when she found Stefan brooding in the living room. "Bonnie went to sleep and Damon's out drinking and I'm about to die from curiosity."

"Just wait until Bonnie is asleep for sure."

"God, you're going to me explode," Caroline groaned, flopping on the couch next to Stefan. "And not in the fun way, either."

Stefan laughed and pressed a soft kiss to her temple.

* * *

"Wait, you want to kill  _Bonnie Bennett?_ Why?" The younger Jacqueline asked, confused. "She's a good person. And I mean,  _really_ good."

"It's not what she's done," the older Jacqueline explained. "It's what she  _will_ do."

"Okay, you're really confusing me right now and I'm getting a headache."

"In less than a year from now, Bonnie Bennett will be giving birth to an abomination."

"And by that you mean…?"

"A vampire-witch hybrid. Something that nature never intended to exist," the older Jacqueline clarified.

"But…even if that did possibly happen…why should we kill her over it? I get that as witches we're supposed to try and keep nature balanced, but imbalances happen all the time and nature finds a way to balance it out on its own."

Jacqueline found it difficult to look at this older version herself. Putting aside the fact that the whole concept of time travel, vampire-witch hybrids, and more was enough to make her go cross-eyed…it was a bit frightening to see how hardened and… _cruel_ she'll become.

"And what if I told you that the life of your entire family depended on you stopping Bonnie Bennett before she can conceive this abomination?"

The younger Jacqueline could feel a lump forming in the back of her throat and she knew that somehow things were about to get even more complicated than they already were.

* * *

"You're looking better," Stefan observed as he entered Dominic's room with Caroline.

He really did. He was still a bit pale, but most of his color seemed to be coming back and he was actually sitting up instead of just slumping against the headboard.

"At least Bonnie can stop worrying now," Dominic replied with a strained smile.

"There's something I need to ask you and I need an honest answer," Stefan began, almost a bit hesitant.

Dominic looked at Stefan, clearly a bit wary about what his question could possibly be.

"You're not actually some distant cousin of Bonnie's from the future, are you?" Dominic opened his mouth to protest, but Stefan continued before he could get the chance, "You're actually her son, aren't you? You're Bonnie and Damon's son."

"Wait, what?" Caroline hissed, looking back and forth between Stefan and Dominic. "There's no way. I mean, Bonnie and Damon get along for the most part, but still…and vampires can't even procreate!"

"Think about it, though. I mean,  _really_ think about it," Stefan said. "He admitted that he's only half-witch, but he wouldn't tell us what the other half was.  _But_ he heals just as fast as a vampire does…well, the poison didn't, but the stab wound did. And he looks just like a Bennett, but haven't you noticed just how much like Damon he acts?"

Dominic looked a bit offended about being compared to Damon, but he didn't say anything.

"Oh my God," Caroline breathes.  _"Oh my God."_

"Please," Dominic said, his voice coming out a bit strangled. "You can't either of them. If they know…it could really jeopardize my existence."

He paused, struggling to find the words.

"I meant to come here when she was already pregnant with me. But like I've been saying, time travel is extremely tricky. I think I already put my existence into a lot of jeopardy just by being here."


	5. Chapter 5

"You're not actually some distant cousin of Bonnie's from the future, are you?" Dominic opened his mouth to protest, but Stefan continued before he could get the chance, "You're actually her son, aren't you? You're Bonnie and Damon's son."

"Wait, what?" Caroline hissed, looking back and forth between Stefan and Dominic. "There's no way. I mean, Bonnie and Damon get along for the most part, but still…and vampires can't even procreate!"

"Think about it, though. I mean,  _really_ think about it," Stefan said. "He admitted that he's only half-witch, but he wouldn't tell us what the other half was.  _But_ he heals just as fast as a vampire does…well, the poison didn't, but the stab wound did. And he looks just like a Bennett, but haven't you noticed just how much like Damon he acts?"

Dominic looked a bit offended about being compared to Damon, but he didn't say anything.

"Oh my God," Caroline breathes.  _"Oh my God."_

"Please," Dominic said, his voice coming out a bit strangled. "You can't either of them. If they know…it could really jeopardize my existence."

He paused, struggling to find the words.

"I meant to come here when she was already pregnant with me. But like I've been saying, time travel is extremely tricky. I think I already put my existence into a lot of jeopardy just by being here."

"Oh my God," Caroline said for the millionth time while Stefan stood there, clearly lost in thought. "Wait, vampires can't have babies, so how…?"

"Yeah, uh, no one ever really told me how, so…" Dominic trailed off.

"Oh. My. God." Pause. "Wait, wait, wait! Why'd you tell me?!" She turned and smacked Stefan on the arm. "Why'd you let him tell me?!  _Everybody_ knows I can't keep a secret!"

Stefan tried to say something, but there was no stopping Caroline.

"I'm gonna spill it! I'm gonna see one of them and it's all gonna come out and then you're going to be majorly screwed," she said, gesturing towards Dominic.

"Caroline," Stefan said, placing his hand on the blonde's shoulders. "Calm down. It's going to be okay."

"Nope, no it's not." Pause. "Are—are you laughing at me?" She asked Dominic.

"Sorry," he said, trying to cover up his laughter and failing miserably at it. "It's just that, even despite the future not being so bright, you really aren't that different." His expression sobered up a bit.

"Well keep your secret," Stefan assured him.

Caroline looked like she was either going to explode or pass out, but she nodded anyway.

"Okay, but here's the thing…uh, what are we going to do? Because if Bonnie and Damon don't…well, y'know, by a certain time, this is all going to be a moot point because you're not going to exist anymore," Caroline told Dominic.

Dominic sat down. "I don't know. Like I said, I had meant to come when my mom was already pregnant with me to avoid all this, but…part of me is wondering if this is maybe how it's supposed to be. I mean, I'm an abomination of nature. I'm not supposed to exist. That's why the future is the way it is. So if…"

"I don't believe that," Stefan interjected, crossing his arms over his broad chest. "Klaus has a child that has witch, wolf, and vampire blood in her. And, yeah, from what I've heard it's caused a lot of trouble in New Orleans, but not to the extent of what you're talking about in the future."

"What are you saying?" Dominic asked, his brow furrowing. "That you think there's some bigger ulterior motive?"

"It's what makes more sense to me."

"Ugh, things have gotten  _way_ too complicated in a span of just two days," Caroline groaned, rubbing her temples.

"Look, it's been a long day for all of us, especially you," Stefan told Dominic, affectionately rubbing Caroline's back with a hand. "We'll talk more about this later. Just get some sleep for now, okay?"

Dominic nodded. "You won't tell them, though, right?" He asked hesitantly. "My mom and Damon, I mean. You won't tell them that I'm actually…"

"Your secret is safe with us for now," Stefan assured him. It doesn't escape his notice how Dominic refers to Bonnie as 'mom', yet doesn't refer to Damon as his father. He really hoped there wasn't some underlying issue there. "Telling Bonnie and Damon won't help anything right now."

Dominic nodded and smiled gratefully as Stefan and Caroline exited the room.

"Oh my God," Caroline whispered yet again. "Can't believe he's actually…I can't believe that you figured it out just like that!" Pause. "Well, actually I can because you're you and you're perceptive to the point where it's actually creepy sometimes. But what do we do now?" She asked, her mind clearly going a hundred miles a minute. "Do we play matchmaker? Do we wait it out and see what happens? And then that psycho witch from the future…"

"Right now…" Stefan said, using a hand to gently guide Caroline towards their bedroom, "We need to sleep."

"Do you seriously think I'm going to be able to sleep after the day we had and everything we just found out?"

* * *

"So do you believe in time travel?" Damon asked Alaric, kicking back another shot. Enzo had already disappeared about an hour ago with some buxom redhead.

"Why? Did you suddenly get an urge to go back to 1864 or something?" Alaric responded dryly.

"No. There's a sixteen year old shacking up in my house, claiming that he's a long lost cousin of Bonnie's from the future and apparently that future is total shit and he's here to save us all from it."

Alaric paused, drink half raised to his mouth. "Wait, are you serious or are your drunk?"

"Oh, I'm serious. Bonnie seems to trust him because of some witchy intuition. I'm a little more skeptical, to say the least."

"Well, considering you and Bonnie have literally hoped dimensions before and time can be considered a dimension, I wouldn't say it's too far-fetched. But, I think a healthy dose of skepticism is good," Alaric said. "But I suppose I can pull Isobel's old research out of storage and see if there's anything in there."

Damon nodded and poured himself another shot from the bottle he had the bartender leave. Everything about this whole situation seemed to bother him much more than it should.

* * *

"Hey, are you just getting home?" Bonnie asked Damon with a frown as she passed by him in the hallway.

"Nope, got in a few hours ago," Damon responded with a grin.

Bonnie laughed a little and shook her head.

"Did you stay the night?"

"Yeah. Caroline and Stefan didn't like the idea of me being home alone given that someone tried to kill me yesterday and I also wanted to keep an eye on Dominic and make sure that the poison passed out of his system okay," Bonnie replied. "I was actually going to go check on him now."

"Why are you so okay with all this?" Damon asked with a frown. "Don't you find all of this—the obvious lies, the half-truths—suspicious?"

"I don't know  _what_ to think," Bonnie sighed. "Does it bother me that after years of peace and finally getting my life on track al this… _stuff_ is starting up again? Yeah. And, yeah, I hate that we don't really know for sure what's coming because Dominic is too afraid to tell us.  _But_ I do know that he genuinely needs our help and I think that, sooner or later, everything he's trying to hide or avoid is going to come to light. I mean, how can it not?"

Damon frowned, still not satisfied. Bonnie moves past him to Dominic's room, knocking on the wooden door before entering.

"Hey, looks like you're doing better," Bonnie commented with a smile upon seeing Dominic move about. She moved closer to him and tentatively reached up on her tiptoes, feeling his forehead with the back of her hand. He had been burning up last night, but it seemed like he was back to normal now.

"Yeah," he replied with a smile. "Thank you for helping to take care of me."

"Of course. Come on," she motioned towards the door. "I'll make us some breakfast and we can talk about what our next step is."

They exit the bedroom and she gives Damon a pointed look as the vampire stares down the younger boy.

* * *

"So how are we gonna go about this?" Caroline asked, pulling herself up to sit on the sink counter as Stefan emerged from the steaming shower. She had been so tempted to join him, but neither of them would have ever emerged for hours then.

"Which problem are you referring to?" Stefan asked, wrapping a towel around his waist.

Caroline reached over and turned the sink water on. "The one where Bonnie and Damon need to screw and somehow magically have a baby," Caroline hissed. She doubted Damon could hear them all the way in here, but she didn't want to take any chances.

"I don't know. Let nature take its course?" Stefan suggested.

"But this is Bonnie and Damon," Caroline replied. "Do you know how obtuse they are? They've been dancing around each other on and off. Although, I swear that  _something_ happened between them when they got sucked into some other dimension even though hell will freeze over before they tell anyone.  _And_ Bonnie's only been with like two guys in the past three years since they've been back and Damon…well, we all know what a manwhore he is."

Stefan sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"See, this is why you should have never let me in on all this. I'm going to be even crazier than I already am. You know that, right?"

Stefan chuckles and shut the sink off before giving Caroline a deep kiss.

"Because you wouldn't have been pissed if I didn't let you in on it, right?" He said when he pulled away from Caroline's lips. "Tell you what: Let's focus on Jacqueline and keeping ourselves alive for now. And maybe along the way we can find ways to drop hints to Bonnie and Damon or figure something else out if worst comes to worst."

"Fine," Caroline said with a groan. "You better get dressed because you're very distracting and it's hard not to jump your bones right now."

Stefan grinned.

* * *

"I think what we need to do is figure out where Jacqueline—future Jacqueline—is," Bonnie said, setting her fork down.

"And then what?" Damon asked, leaning against the counter and sipping his bourbon.

Vampire or no, Bonnie would never understand how he drank bourbon practically 24/7.

"I don't know," Bonnie replied, rubbing her forehead. "But whatever she's up to it can't be good. She probably went to someone she thinks she can trust like another witch or her family…or even herself."

"She won't try anything again so soon," Dominic replied, staring down into his coffee mug. "She always likes to carefully plan out every last detail of what she does. I think this was just a test to see if I had found you and gained your trust."

"God, I really wish I knew what I did…" Bonnie trailed off. "I don't think anyone's ever looked at me with that much hatred in their eyes, which is saying something given all the different people and things I've faced."

Dominic became very interested in his coffee.

"You know, I find it very interesting that you expect us to be able to help you when you won't even tell us what we need to know," Damon comments, slamming his tumbler down on the counter. Bonnie's surprised it didn't crack from the force.

"Because, like I told you, I came back at the wrong time! If I had come a month later…"

"Well, you didn't."

"Damon," Bonnie interjected.

Damon doesn't say anything. He polishes of his bourbon before throwing the class in the sink hard enough for it to shatter.

Bonnie sighed.

"Look, I know he's being a bit of a jackass, but he does have a point," Bonnie told Dominic. "We want to help, but you're not giving us very much to go on."

"Originally, I thought all this happened because of me being born. I'm half-witch, half-vampire."

Bonnie's eyes widened.

"I know, it's not supposed to be possible," he added upon seeing Bonnie's expression. "That's why it ends up causing an uproar. But then Stefan pointed out that when Klaus Mikaelson had a child, nothing to that extreme ever happened, so we're wondering if there's something else."

"Wait, you told Stefan that you were also half-vampire when you wouldn't even tell me or Damon?"

"He, uh, put it all together…you can't exactly slip anything by him, y'know?" He answered sheepishly.

Bonnie smiled a little at that. And then it occurred to that the way he just spoke of Stefan indicated that he knew the younger Salvatore in the future to more of an extent that he was letting. She decided not to push it for now, though. It was already hard enough to get him to fess up more information.

"Who are your parents?" Bonnie asked. "Do I already know them or…"

"Uh, no, not yet, I think my mom will come looking for you for help once she finds out she's pregnant."

"And you won't tell me who they are?" She sighed upon his look. "Right, okay, screwing up the whole future thing."

Dominic looked down at his coffee mug once again. He was telling so many lies that he was sure to get caught in all of them sooner or later, but what else could he do?

* * *

"I still can't believe that Bonnie Bennett would actually kill my entire family. I mean, she's always been so nice to everyone. Everybody likes her," the younger Jacqueline said to her future self.

"Don't be so naïve. People can fool and deceive one another all the time," the older Jacqueline responded brusquely.

"It's just…"

"She is going to kill everyone that you love except for our little sister, Natalie," the older version of herself snapped. "They gave her an opportunity to right her wrong before it came to term. They even offered to marry her off to one of our cousins so that she can replace the child she lost and be a part of our coven and she refused. She'd rather have birthed that abomination and start an entire war. "

"It wasn't their choice to make for her," Jacqueline protested.

She knew her family. In fact, she wouldn't be surprised if what the older Jacqueline had told her was really more about gaining Bonnie as a powerful member of the coven rather than preserving the balance of nature. When it came to matters of the coven and the supernatural, they could be hard and cruel and power-hungry at times. She just never thought she'd see the day where she became like that as well.

"And that makes you okay with killing  _your family?"_

"No, of course not! But it's not as cut and dry as you're making it out to be! Maybe if we just went to our family and talked to them, we could stop this from being a problem before it even begins." Even as she said it, she knew it was a lost cause.

The older Jacqueline laughed. "Because you know how understanding they are when it comes to matters like these." She pauses. "But, do go see them. In fact, you should go take a look at your great-great aunt Irina's grimoire. Remember, what a powerful seer she was? You'd find some pretty interesting prophecies and predictions written there…"

The younger Jacqueline felt a chill in her body, knowing that no matter how she resists, she's going to have some hard choices to make.


	6. Chapter 6

"Any particular reason why you're looking through our crazy great aunt's grimoire?" Jacqueline's younger sister, Natalie asked.

Natalie was fourteen and in that awkward stage of adolescence where she was mostly elbows and knees. She definitely lacked a filter, though, when it came to her mouth, which drove their parents and the rest of the coven crazy. Jacqueline found it hilarious.

"She wasn't crazy. She was a seer," Jacqueline corrected. "A very powerful and respected one."

"Or, y'know, she might have just been whacked out on drugs or something and people were dumb enough to take her seriously."

"Don't let mom or dad or anyone else in the coven hear that," Jacqueline warned with a laugh. "They'll probably tan your hide for it."

"Yeah, well, I'm off to go actually have some real fun," Natalie said, shrugging and rolling her eyes. "Enjoy your dusty old book."

Jacqueline smiles and shook her head as Natalie left. Then, she turned back to the grimoire in front of her and sighed. Irina Chambers had written a majority of her premonitions down in this grimoire and there were still a number that had yet to pass.

Her future self had insisted that she look through this grimoire, but she was kind of afraid of what she'd find. Obviously it wasn't anything good or else the older Jacqueline wouldn't have suggested she look at it in the first place.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and focused her magic. She didn't know exactly what she was looking for, but she had a pretty good idea, so hopefully her magic would help her out.

The pages turned, ruffled by a strange wind, before settling.

Jacqueline's scanned the page, eyes squinting at the tiny, cramped, old-fashioned handwriting. Not to mention, it had all been written in Latin (something her coven often did when writing in a grimoire…something about tradition or whatever).

Roughly translated, it told her that a child born of a vampire and witch would lead to a great war and that a significant number of supernatural beings would be killed in the process.

_But that's still horrible vague,_ Jacqueline thought to herself.  _There's a lot it_ _ **doesn't**_ _say. Namely,_ _ **who**_ _starts the war._  And she'd be lying if she wasn't pretty that it would be her coven to start this so-called war.

"Finding something interesting?" Jacqueline's mother asked, peeking her head into the room.

"Uh, not really," Jacqueline replied, hoping that her mother wouldn't suspect anything. "I guess I'm just feeling a little curious today."

"Oh? Finally doing rejecting your heritage?"

_And here we go…_

"Just because I don't let being a witch take over my entire life doesn't mean I'm rejecting anything," Jacqueline responded.

Silence.

"But there is something I'm wondering," Jacqueline admitted. "Visions, or prophecies, or whatever you want to call them, when they're about the future, do they always come true? Or can things change?"

"If it came from you great-great aunt, I can tell you that it'll come true," her mother replied with raised eyebrows. "She maybe have been dead for over a decade now, but she still hasn't been wrong yet."

That's what Jacqueline was afraid of. Still, though, it left things pretty vague. There were a million ways that what she had read could come true.

"Do we still keep track of these, though? How do we know if one is happening or if one is about to happen?"

"Irina had cast an enchantment so that the leader of the coven would be aware of what is about to happen and then could decide on appropriate action."

_Well isn't that just freakishly convenient._

"What is making you so interested in this suddenly?" he mother asked with slightly narrowed eyes.

"I don't know," Jacqueline replied with what she hoped looked like a nonchalant shrug. "Like I told you, just feeling curious today.

She knew her mother didn't believe that for a hot minute. But, she didn't press it at the moment and Jacqueline is grateful for that.

* * *

Still, the horrible feeling of foreboding and the inkling of knowing that things will be bad no matter what she decisions she would make clawed their way into the pit of her stomach.

"So…" Caroline began, as she drank from a bottle of wine and watched Bonnie shove clothes into a small suitcase.

Nobody liked the idea of Bonnie staying alone when there was a vengeful witch from the future out there. Bonnie kept trying to insist that she could take care of herself just fine. But, since everyone was so adamant about it, she agreed to stay at the boardinghouse. Mostly to shut everyone up.

"Something on your mind?" Bonnie asked dryly. She could tell that Caroline had been keeping something in for a bit now.

"Do you ever think about the future?" Caroline asked.

"Uh, well, I don't know if you noticed, but we've kinda been talking about it non-stop for days."

"No, I mean, like,  _your_ future. Like, where do you see things headed? Stuff like guys and babies."

"Stuff like guys and babies," Bonnie repeated, pausing to give Caroline an odd look.

"Yeah. I mean, do you ever see yourself having kids in the possibly near-future?"

"Haven't thought about it too much," Bonnie admitted with a small shrug. "I've been busy with school and stuff. Besides, I'm not so sure I'm cut out for the whole parenting thing."

"Why not?" Caroline asked, cringing at how her voice sounded a little  _too_ sharp.

"Well, for one, the world is a  _very_ scary place…especially when you know what's out there. And now knowing what the future might actually be like…" Pause. "Besides, my own parents weren't exactly shining examples. I mean, Grams and Elena's parents tried to step in as much as they could, but it's still not quite the same, y'know? Besides, then there's also the whole matter of finding a man you like well enough to have a child with and  _hopefully_ raise together. That alone sounds like a miracle in and of itself."

As she talked, Bonnie couldn't but wonder why this topic was ever coming up. Unless…

"Care, do…do you feel like you're missing out because you can't…?"

"Nah," Caroline said, shaking her head. "I came to terms with that a long time ago. Stefan and I never talked about it, but I always figured we could go with adoption if we ever decided we wanted kids. Although, the idea of changing diapers and wiping snotty noses…let's just say, I think I'll be happier being the favorite aunt who spoils their beautiful nieces and nephews rotten," she said, giving Bonnie a pointed look.

Bonnie laughed a little and gave her a wry smile. "You might be a vampire, but, seriously, don't hold your breath waiting for that."

"Well, you never know…things can happen sooner than you expect," Caroline replied, giving Bonnie and odd little smile.

"Oookay, that's enough wine for you," Bonnie said, reaching over and plucking the bottle out of the blonde vampire's hands.

* * *

"Where are you running off to?" Stefan asked when he caught Damon in the foyer, shrugging on his leather jacket.

"Where do you think?"

"Is that really such a good idea when we know there's a very angry witch here from the future?"

"Last I checked, it was Bonnie she was after," Damon asked with a frown.

"And if she decides to use you to get to Bonnie?" Stefan responded.

"Why would she do that?"

Stefan just gives him a look and Damon scoffs.

"You know, you're lucky we're vampires, little brother," Damon said. "If we weren't, your face would be full of stress wrinkles by now."

"What? And you're not worried at all?"

"Last I checked, everyone kept frowning on me for being so suspicious, so…"

"That's because your hostility towards Dominic has literally helped nothing," Stefan shot back.

" _Why_ am I the only that thinks maybe, just maybe, he isn't as good or innocent as he seems? Have you forgotten basically  _anything_ that's happened to us  _ever_?"

"He's trying to help us, Damon. Not everyone is out to screw us over."

Damon's eyes narrowed in on Stefan. It didn't escape his notice that his younger brother was so uncharacteristically sure about all of this.

"What do you know that I don't?"

Stefan knew better to deny knowing something because Damon could clearly see through him right now, but he couldn't exactly tell him the truth, either. At least not yet.

"I can't tell you. All I can say is that I know we can trust him. We  _have_ to trust him."

Damon's lips thin out in anger. "Fine. Just remember, if anything happens because of all this secrecy, it's on  _you._ "

* * *

"Here, I'll help you with this," Dominic said, taking Bonnie's suitcase when she enters the Salvatore boardinghouse.

"Uh, thanks," Bonnie said, a little surprised as she followed Dominic and her suitcase up the stairs.

"I, uh, asked him to kinda get Bonnie out of the way, so we can talk real quick," Stefan told Caroline sheepishly.

"Oh, thank God, because I think I blew it," Caroline said with a sigh.

Stefan raised his eyebrows.

"I was at Bonnie's, helping her pack—well, okay, she was packing, I was drinking her wine—and I started asking her if she ever thought about having kids and stuff and I don't think she wants any," Caroline said with a frown.

"Damon knows I know something that I won't tell him," Stefan replies.

"God, we really suck at this," Caroline said, but before she could say anymore, she heard Bonnie come down the stairs.

"Uh-oh, I don't like the look you two have on your faces. What's wrong?" Bonnie said with raised eyebrows.

"Nothing," Caroline said. "Well, I mean, we were just talking more about the whole future issue," she amended quickly upon Bonnie's skeptical look.

"Yeah, I was actually thinking that maybe we could try and get things straight," Bonnie said, heading over to a desk and digging around in it, pulling out a yellow legal pad and a pen.

She figured that maybe the first step to it all would be to attempt to work out some sort of timeline so that they all had some sort of idea about what they were working with.

"So, you said you think we got about four to five months from now before things start stirring up with Jacqueline and her coven?" Bonnie asked, sitting down on the couch.

"Mom was only like four months pregnant with me, but that's what I've been told," Dominic said a little hesitantly as he sat down in an armchair opposite from Bonnie. Caroline joined Bonnie on the couch while Stefan sat in another armchair.

Bonnie scribbles that down on the legal pad. It was mid-July now, so that gave them until November or December. Or at least it would if Jacqueline's future self hadn't come in the picture.

Ugh, she could already feel the headache coming.

"Okay, and you're sixteen, so…" she wrote that down on the notepad. "So what can you tell me that happens in between now and then?"

"Uh, I was born in early May and thing started getting even worse around that time. That's when other covens started joining in," he told her. Bonnie made another note.

"A lot of supernaturals—witches who disagreed with what was happening, vampires, werewolves—they tried to fight back," Dominic continued. "But, after about five years, the Originals kinda just disappeared off the face of the earth and many others did the same in an attempt at self-preservation."

Bonnie looked up from the legal pad, more than a little alarmed. The only time she's ever seen or heard of the Originals going on the run was when someone like Esther or Mikael had been around. And both of them actually had had solid means of killing the Originals.

_Not good,_ Bonnie thought, biting down on her lower lip.  _Not good._ It doesn't escape her notice that Stefan and Caroline look equally alarmed at this.

"Okay, so it sounds like we have a solid nine to ten months before things get really bad and Jacqueline gains a lot of manpower… _except,_ now there's that whole future Jacqueline issue. So, I'm guessing our time table has moved up  _a lot,_ " Bonnie said, rubbing her forehead. Yep. There was that headache.

Caroline opened her mouth to say something, but Alaric chose that moment to walk in, a thin file in hand.

"Hey, Damon around," he asked, stepping down into the living room.

"He took off about an hour ago," Stefan replied. It was the first time Bonnie had heard him speak all afternoon. Something had clearly been bothering him all afternoon.

"Ric, this is Dominic. From the future," Bonnie said when she noticed the former history teacher not-so-subtly staring at the teenager. "And I really hope Damon took a moment or two out of his affair with bourbon to tell you about it because I already have a headache."

"That's what this is for, actually," Ric said, holding up the file he was holding. "I promised him I'd do some digging through Isobel's old research to see if she had anything on time travel. There really isn't much of anything here, though, because Isobel focused more on supernatural beings than anything."

"Thanks," Bonnie said, taking the proffered file from Alaric. She flipped through it, but, like Ric had said, there wasn't much. It was pretty much all theory about whether the future is set, alternate dimensions, and such.

"Let me guess: He asked you to do this in hopes of finding out that anyone who goes back through time just happens to be out to get him," Dominic replied dryly.

"Uh…" Ric looked a little taken aback by that. Probably because he hadn't seen any of Damon and Dominic's previous interactions. "Look, I obviously just met you, but you've got to understand why some of us might just be suspicious by default. Too much has happened for us not to be."

Dominic looked down, but didn't respond.

"Okay, so, it's safe to assume that future-Jacqueline is plotting our demise—or at least  _my_ demise—as we speak and that maybe has even found herself some help already," Bonnie said, changing the subject. She turned to Dominic. "How much do you know about the poisons she creates? Hopefully we can put together some antidotes…oh, and Stefan, Caroline, can you guys please feel Ric on anything Damon might have missed? My eyes cross just thinking about it," Bonnie added as an afterthought.

"She probably wouldn't try using poison again," Dominic replied as Stefan quietly spoke with Alaric. "At least not so soon. She's probably going to go for something bigger and/or worse now."

Bonnie sighed. Of course she would.

"Okay, so how about we maybe work on some protection? Put up a ward around the boardinghouse and work on some antidotes just in case? And hopefully maybe conjure some other ideas up."

Dominic nodded and they both headed upstairs where Bonnie had left all her witch supplies.

* * *

Damon stiffened when he entered his home late at night. Some sort of magic had hit him. It didn't hurt exactly, but he could feel it…it was kind of like static electricity.

Immediately cautious, he stepped further into the boardinghouse. He relaxed a little when he heard Bonnie sigh from the kitchen.

"Why was I hit with magic when I walked into my own home?" He asked her, entering the kitchen.

She was sitting at the table, intently studying a notepad in front of her.

"I set up some wards around the boardinghouse. It lets me know if someone is entering the house and if they have malicious intent. Oh, and Alaric left this for you," she gestured towards a file that had been placed on a corner of the kitchen table.

"If you could do that, why didn't you do that years ago?" He pulled a chair out and sat down. "Like, when Klaus was still a problem?" He asked, snatching up the file and flipping it open.

"Because I didn't know how then," Bonnie replied. "I've learned a lot more over the years."

Damon doesn't respond. Instead, he let out a frustrated sigh and threw the file back on the table. Apparently, like her, he didn't find anything of use or interest either.

"Oh, and you'll be happy to know that Dominic was able to pass through the wards with flying colors," Bonnie said pointedly.

"Or maybe he found a way around it that you don't know about."

Bonnie sighed. "Look, I get why you're so suspicious of him, I really do. And…and I know I've been really wrong about some of the people I've trusted before, but…I don't know how to describe it or what to call it, but everything in me is telling me that I have to help him, protect him. Maybe it's because he's related to me, even if it is a distant relation, or maybe because he's only a year young than I was when I found out when I was a witch and everything and he's obviously already been through so much, but…" she trails off. "I don't know. All I do know is I can't remember the last time I've felt so sure about someone."

Damon leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. "I suppose he did save you from that psycho Terminator-witch," Damon said begrudgingly.

Bonnie smiled at him a little. Maybe that was a bit of a start.

"What's that?" he asked, nodding at the notepad in front of her.

"Well, I was talking to Dominic earlier today. I wanted to see if I could set up a timeline for us of sorts, but with all this time travel stuff, I don't know how useful it'll be," Bonnie said.

"Well, what do we know now?" Damon asked.

Bonnie scooched her chair closer to him, sliding the notepad along the table.

Upstairs, Dominic lay awake in bed, wondering if maybe everything would actually work out, after all.

* * *

"Have a nice trip home?" the older Jacqueline asked her younger counterpart who had just entered through the door.

The younger Jacqueline frowned upon seeing her future self. She had certainly made herself at home, a glass of wine in front of her and wearing her younger self's clothes.

_Is it really imposing, though, if she's technically me?_ She wondered.

"The premonition Irina had written down wasn't exactly convincing, if that's what you were hoping for," the younger Jacqueline said dryly. "It was vague enough that it could be open to just about any interpretation. For instance, it could easily mean that  _we_ are the one to start this supposed war."

"Actually, I wasn't expecting it to convince you," future Jacqueline admitted with a saccharine smile. "Honestly, I just wanted you gone so I'd have somewhere safe to think and plan without your constant judgement. And I was hoping that maybe seeing our family would give you some warm fuzzy feelings."

Jacqueline just stared at her future self apprehensively. She had no doubt that the woman before her—despite technically being her—viewed her as a pawn on a chess table to move into place.

"Ah, well, I figured out my next move," the older Jacqueline continued with a shrug. "One I think you'll feel better about helping me with. See, since you're so hung up on the here and now and convinced that Bonnie Bennett will forever be good, I figured maybe target the one who has already done their fair share of horrific deeds?"

The younger Jacqueline had a strong feeling that she wouldn't like where this was going.

"Instead of Bonnie, we'll target Damon Salvatore."


	7. Chapter 7

"What are you doing?" Jacqueline asked her future counterpart. The older women seemed to busily be putting together a potion of sorts.

"Just putting the finishing touches on my plan," she replied, not bothering to look up.

"You know, for someone who kept insisting that they wanted my help, you're sure keeping me out of the loop," the younger Jacqueline commented with a frown.

The older Jacqueline actually chuckles a bit. "Believe it or not, I'd actually forgotten how soft I once was. Don't worry, the plan is almost complete."

"And what exactly  _is_ that plan?" the younger Jacqueline asked. She knew that her future counterpart was planning on killing Damon Salvatore, but she'd been more than a little spotty on the details.

"Stop worrying so much about the details. I have it under control. Once it's finished, I will explain it all."

"Okay, but if you—we—whatever—go through with this…how does it actually end here? Damon has a brother, friends. They won't let this go."

She had mentioned this to her future self more than once, but it was clearly falling on deaf ears.

"In what version of this do you really see yourself coming out with absolutely no blood on your hands?" The older Jacqueline asked, finally looking at her younger self with narrowed eyes. "Ah, well, it doesn't matter. Everything is prepared and with any luck, Damon Salvatore will be dead by the end of this week. I just have to find the right moment to strike."

* * *

"Alright, so let's talk phase one of operation 'get Bonnie and Damon together to make a baby'…and I'm totally gonna have to figure out a better name for that," Caroline told Stefan, pushing some wet strands of hair out of her face.

Okay, so plotting with her boyfriend in the shower about how to get her best friend and his brother laid and pregnant wasn't exactly the sexiest thing…in fact, it was a little twisted. But it was important and no one would be listening to them in here.

"Maybe we should lock them in the basement," Caroline continued, "And not let them out. If they don't kill each other, then they're bound to f— What?" She asked upon Stefan's odd look.

"You know, considering I'm a vampire that was born in 1846, I've accepted that the world is a strange place a long time ago. But standing in the shower with my beautiful girlfriend, talking about how we're going to get my big brother to have sex with my girlfriend's best friend so that my nephew who came back from the future to save us can be born…it's a whole new level of weird," he told her, echoing her earlier thoughts.

"Yeah, yeah it is."

"We could let nature run its course," Stefan suggested. "I mean, it happened without Dominic coming back the first time to give us the heads up. I mean, he wouldn't exist if that wasn't the case…unless we're now in some weird time loop thing where this is what's supposed to happen from the get-go."

"Yeah, just stop thinking about that," Caroline replied. "I don't think it's one of those things that can really be understood."

Stefan chuckled and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

"How about we go out to  _the Grille_ tonight?" Stefan asked. "We can take Dominic with…he's been cooped up here a while and it's a public place, so I doubt Jacqueline would try anything then. And, with any luck, maybe Bonnie and Damon will spend some time together tonight."

"Okay," Caroline agreed. "I guess that can be a start. But much longer and we'll have to start talking more drastic measures."

Stefan didn't really want to know what Caroline considered to be 'drastic measures' in a situation like this.

* * *

Bonnie sat in the living room, trying not to be nervous. Things had actually been quiet since that day future Jacqueline had tried to kill her, which only served to convince Bonnie even more that whatever the witch was planning was  _big._

"Okay, we're heading out now," Caroline announced, Stefan and Dominic in tow.

"Dominic's going with you?" Bonnie asked with raised eyebrows. It's not that Dominic wasn't good company or anything, but Caroline had told her she was having a date night with Stefan, which made the attention of Dominic really odd.

"Yeah, he's been cooped up here too long, I think," Caroline said with a shrug. "I mean, we're just going to  _the Grille,_ so it's not like it's a big deal."

"I should come with," Bonnie said, standing up. "I know things have been quiet lately, but…"

"No!"

Bonnie paused and stared at Caroline.

"I mean, you shouldn't feel like you have to come with you," Caroline quickly amended practically stumbling over the words. "I mean…uh…let's just go," she said to Dominic and Stefan, all but running out of the house.

"She okay?" Bonnie asked with a frown. "That was pretty weird, even for her."

"I guess she's just really looking forward to dinner," Stefan said dryly with a shrug.

Bonnie shook heard head as Stefan and Dominic followed Caroline out the door.

"I'm sorry," Caroline groaned as Stefan drove. "I'm so bad at being inconspicuous with this."

"Don't worry about it," Dominic replied with a strained smile. "It's all probably for the best."

"What that's supposed to mean?" Stefan asked, looking at Dominic in the rearview mirror. He was clearly keeping some things bottled inside.

"I know I've mentioned this before and I know you told me that you think there's an overall bigger issues, but…" the young man sighed, "I can't help but think that maybe it is better if I'm not born."

"Stop," Stefan told him.

"If you even knew everything that's happened…that will happen…"

Stefan pulled the car over to the side of the road and turned around in his seat to meet Dominic's eyes.

"You  _can't_ think like that," Stefan told him sternly. "I won't ask you what's happened because I know your hesitations about telling us, but trust me, I've blamed myself for plenty of things that have happened to people I care about in my life and sometimes it's been my fault and some of them…sometimes it's just horrible luck and sometimes it was because of others. But, either way, playing the blame game with yourself just makes you miserable and keeps you from actually living and getting stuff done."

Dominic looked down and let out a little laugh. "Believe it or not, you've actually told me pretty much the same thing, almost word for word just before I left to come here."

"Then maybe you should actually listen to me."

Caroline smiled reassuringly at Dominic and took Stefan's hand, squeezing it lightly. Deep inside, though, she couldn't help but be saddened at how Dominic felt the need to question his existence. She can't even begin to imagine how bad the future must really be.

* * *

"Is it me or does Caroline seem to be a bit…odd?" Bonnie asked Damon shortly after Stefan, Caroline, and Dominic had left. He was sitting in an armchair with his usual glass of bourbon.

"It's Caroline," he replied with a shrug.

"Uh, excuse you. Don't be rude. And you know what I meant."

He just shrugged.

"So? What are you doing tonight? Your usual ménageàtrois with Alaric and Enzo?" She asked him with a cheeky grin.

Damon scoffed. "What are you? Jealous of us?" He shot back. "Believe it or not, they actually have dates tonight. Well, Ric has a date with some doctor. Enzo's isn't so much a date, but…well, you know Enzo."

Bonnie laughed.

Damon finished draining his glass and placed it down on a table before standing up.

"Let's go," he told her.

"Go? Go where?" Bonnie asked, following Damon as he headed out of the living room to the foyer.

"There's this fun little bar about an hour outside of Mystic Falls…unless you'd rather stay here and do nothing all night?" He explained, pulling on his leather jacket.

Bonnie smiled and grabbed her jacket.

"Just so you know, I'm not letting you get me drunk. I've had a rule about that ever since that one night on the Other Side…" She froze.

They'd had an unspoken agreement to not talk about that night and what happened after again. After how many years, why slip up now? She looked at him and saw that he had stiffened a bit.

"I'm sorry, I—"

"Lightweight," he responded with one of his lopsided grins.

Bonnie smiled and breathed a small sigh of relief.

Just then, the door unceremoniously crashes open and Bonnie found herself being thrown from the foyer into the living room. She landed painfully, a little dazed, but she forced herself up.

Jacqueline—future Jacqueline—had Damon on his knees in agony. He was clearly struggling, trying to fight against the pain to defend himself, but it seemed overwhelming. Jacqueline reached out and stabbed him in the shoulder with a dagger.

She remembered how Jacqueline had tried to stab her before and the dagger she had tried to use had been coated in poison.

"No," she yelled, feeling a bit of terror grip her. She reached out, using her own magic to throw Jacqueline. She tried to make her way to Damon, but Jacqueline recovered quickly and threw her across the room again.

This time, she felt and heard a sharp  _crack_ in her wrist. She yelled in pain, but forced herself back up again.

Jacqueline was chanting while pouring some sort of liquid in a perfect circle around Damon who was still clearly struggling to do  _something._

She briefly glanced at Bonnie who was pulling herself back up, but didn't stop her chanting. She tried to send another blast of magic Bonnie's way, but Bonnie managed to block it this time.

Bonnie sent her own wave of magic, hoping that this time that futuristic bitch snapped her neck.

"Damn it, damn it," Bonnie muttered as she ran to Damon. Mindful of her now broken right wrist, she awkwardly pulled the dagger in his shoulder out with her left hand. That's when she noticed that the ring that had been poured around him was smoking. Damon noticed it to.

"Bonnie, get out of here," he told her with gritted teeth.

"Are you crazy? No way!" She snapped back, helping Damon to his feet.

"No! Get away from him, you little bitch!" She heard Jacqueline shriek from the doorway as she tried to throw Bonnie with her magic yet again.

But, apparently whatever spell Jacqueline had been trying to cast was set in motion because Bonnie's suddenly felt like she was flying. And then her world went black.


	8. Chapter 8

"What the hell happened?" Caroline gasped when they entered the boardinghouse.

The door was wide open, there was broken glass in the living, burn marks on the Persian rug in the foyer. And, most importantly, there was absolutely no sign of Bonnie or Damon.

"Bonnie!" Caroline yelled. "Damon!"

No response.

"Jacqueline," Dominic said, paling. "She must have attacked while we were gone."

"No, no, we don't know that," Caroline replied, trying not to let her panicking show. She reached into her purse, pulling her cell phone out and dialing Bonnie's number and then Damon's. Neither of them pick up. Then, she dials another number.

"Pick up, Enzo," Caroline grumbled. She dialed his number several more times.

"I really hope you have a good reason for calling," Enzo growled when he picked up the phone.

"Please tell me that Bonnie and/or Damon are with your right now," Caroline replied.

"Unless they've suddenly become a leggy redhead, I'd say not," Enzo answered dryly.

Caroline groaned and hung up on him. She looked over at Stefan who had decided to give Matt a call.

"I've been working at the station all night," she heard Matt reply to Stefan. "Why, is something wrong?"

"Possibly," Stefan answered.

 _More like probably,_ Caroline thought,  _or definitely._

"I'll call you later and fill you in when we find out what's going on," Stefan assured him before hanging up the phone.

"So…" Caroline said, looking back and forth between Dominic and Stefan. "If you're not panicking already, now would be the time."

"We should have known something like this would happen," Dominic said, shaking his head and pacing back and forth in front of the door. "It was stupid of me to leave them alone, especially when I knew that Jacqueline has just been bidding her time."

"No," Stefan said, shaking his head. "This isn't your fault or anyone else's except for Jacqueline's. And Bonnie and Damon are more than capable of taking care of themselves." Pause. "They're obviously still alive."

"Obviously?" Caroline half-shrieked. "Obviously?  _How?_ We don't even know what the hell happened!"

"Because Dominic is still here," Stefan answered, still calm. "If Bonnie and Damon were dead, he'd no longer be here 'cause he'd no longer exist."

"Okay," Caroline replied a lot more tranquilly, nodding. "Good point. But still…what the hell happened to them?"

"Bonnie once mentioned that she thought it was possible that Jacqueline was seeking help from her present self," Stefan said, rubbing a thumb over his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe it's time to go pay her a visit."

* * *

"Bonnie," she heard a voice say and a cool hand touched her face. "Come on, you gotta wake up."

With a groan, she hazily blinked her green eyes open, meeting a set of shocking icy blue.

"Damon? Wh—?" Then it all came rushing back to her; Jacqueline attacking them and the spell she had cast.

With a gasp, she shot up, her head almost hitting Damon's. Looking around, it still looked like they were in the boardinghouse. Only it was day now.

"Your wrist is broken," Damon told her, looking down at the swollen and purple appendage. "I need to make sure the bones are in their proper place before I can give you blood to heal it. If it heals out of place, it wouldn't be pretty."

"Of course," Bonnie groaned sardonically. "Okay." She nodded, steeling herself for the pain that was about to come her way.

Damon tried to be gentle as he carefully pressed on her wrist, feeling the bones. Still though, a sharp pain, akin to hellfire, spread from her wrist up her arm and throughout the rest of her body. She clenched her teeth and grunted and tried to think of anything else.

"Lucky for you, nothing got knocked out of place," he finally decided.

"I don't think lucky is the word that should be used in this situation at all," Bonnie told him dryly.

Damon scoffed before allowing his fangs to descend. He ripped into his wrist before offering it Bonnie. It wasn't the first time he's used his blood to heal her, but, truth be told, she always found the taste disgusting (vampire or no, it was blood after all), but the soothing relief it always brought to her pain was well worth it.

She pulled away, wiping away any stray blood around her mouth. It's then that she remembered how Jacqueline had stabbed Damon.

"She stabbed you. What if she poisoned you like she tried to poison me that one time?"

"I feel fine," he replied with a shrug. "When Dominic took the poison for you, it had started affecting him right away."

Bonnie bit her lower lip, still not convinced. It was obvious that Jacqueline had a number of tricks up her sleeve that they probably couldn't even begin to fathom.

"Where's Stefan, Caroline, and Dominic?" Bonnie asked. "It's morning, so shouldn't they have been back by now?"

Damon sighed, standing up.

"Yeah, about that…I think whatever spell she cast, it either displaced us or everyone else. I'm betting it was us, though," Damon said.

"What?"

"Cell phone doesn't work at all," he said, pulling his out of his back pocket and showing her the blank white screen. "And," he walked over to the door, throwing it up. "There is not a single sound that I can catch, even with my super-hearing. Not a bird, a squirrel, a car. Nothing."

"What are you saying?" Bonnie asked, pulling herself up off the floor. She has a feeling she knew what he was getting at, but the answer is more than a little terrifying.

"I think she threw us into another dimension where we're the only ones. Only, given her reaction, I don't think you were supposed to come with me."

* * *

"Be ready to run if you have to," Dominic said to Stefan and Caroline. "I know I'm more likely to be her target than you, but I stand a lot better chance of surviving whatever she's got than you two do."

"If that's your way of telling us to leave you behind if we have to, you can forget it," Stefan told him flatly. "It's not happening."

Dominic sighed. He knew firsthand that there was no arguing with his uncle on these matters, but his mother and Damon were already in a bad situation and he really didn't need the same to happen to his aunt and uncle.

Sighing again, he reached forward and rapped his knuckles on the wooden door of the apartment a few times.

Seeing the woman who had literally made his entire existence a living hell younger and without the… _evil_ in her eyes almost gave him a head rush.

"Can I help you?" She asked, brown eyes looking over the three of them.

"Have any conversations with your future self lately?" Caroline asked, cutting to the chase. Saying that subtlety was never her strong suit would be a massive understatement.

Jacqueline paled considerably upon Caroline's questioned.

"I—I'm sorry. I can't help you," she said quickly and moved to shut the door in their faces.

"My best friend and my boyfriend's brother just went missing and I know you did it," Caroline snapped, preventing Jacqueline from closing the door. "Or at least your future self did. And you clearly know  _something."_

Despite still looking shaken, the young woman narrowed her eyes. "Do  _not_ threaten me," she said harshly. The lights in the apartment flickered warningly.

"We're not threatening you," Stefan assured her, nudging Caroline out of the way to try and diffuse the situation.

Looking at him and then looking down at the ground, Jacqueline fidgeted a little. Then, she looked up and glanced back and forth to both sides of the hallway as if looking for something before stepping back to allow them into the apartment, shutting and locking the door behind him.

Jacqueline took a deep breath before beginning. "She filled me in on what happened…or will happen, I guess. But honestly? I don't know  _what_ to think. Bonnie's been in a few classes of mine, but I don't know her all that well, but  _she_ —myself, I guess—told me that Bonnie will kill my entire family other than me and my sister if I didn't do something about the baby that Bonnie is going to have." She looks at Dominic and the startling realization on her face tells the room that she realized that he must be the said child.

Dominic himself was frowning and paled a little. The witch lines and covens have become so blurred in his time that he never realized that other than Jacqueline's sister, the rest of her family was gone. And no one had told them that it was Bonnie's doing…if that even was the truth. It didn't sound like something his mother would do.

 _But she would have if it meant protecting me,_ he realized.

"The thing is…" Jacqueline continued. "I know my family and I wouldn't be surprised if they're actually the aggressors in all this, but…they're still my family, y'know?"

It was all so surreal to Dominic. The woman in front of him was a far cry from the woman in the future who was on a crusade to supposedly "purify" the world.

"And she—me, sorry this gets so confusing—isn't exactly a fan of my hesitance, so she never told me what she was planning other than she was targeting Damon. She thought he'd be an easier target. I can't help you even if I wanted to."

"Great," Caroline groaned, bringing a hand to her forehead, she paused suddenly and looked at the apartment door. Stefan and Damon look in the same way, all having heard it. "Someone just came into the hallway outside."

Jacqueline looked alarmed. "That might be her—me. Go. Now."

Caroline, Stefan, and Dominic head out the nearest window.

* * *

Bonnie and Damon made their way into town. As they expected, there were literally no signs of life.

"Well, we've been dropped into other dimensions before," Damon pointed out.

"Except we never figured out how we got dropped back into our own world  _three_ years later," Bonnie shot back. "And we weren't deliberately put there by a vengeful witch from the future, either."

Damon didn't respond.

"And you know what else I can't figure out? Before  _I_ had been the target. But this time,  _you_ were. And for the life of me, I really can't figure out  _why._ "

Damon snorted. "Maybe the problem is that we keep assuming there's actually any sort of reasoning behind what psycho future-witch does. Maybe she's just—"

"Damon?" Bonnie asked, concerned when he abruptly cut himself off. Looking at him, she'd noticed that he'd gone a little pale, too…well, paler than usual.

"I guess you weren't wrong about the dagger being poisoned," Damon said, his face twisting in displeasure.

Bonnie's eyes widened and the feeling of worry began to squeeze her chest.

"Wh—"

"Werewolf venom."


	9. Chapter 9

"I guess you weren't wrong about the dagger being poisoned," Damon said, his face twisting in displeasure.

Bonnie's green eyes widened and the feeling of worry began to squeeze her chest.

"Wh—"

"Werewolf venom."

"Werewolf venom?" Bonnie repeated.

"Yeah. Trust me, I've experience it enough to know what it feels like Bonnie now," Damon replied dryly.

Bonnie could feel her heart sinking straight down into her stomach.

"That's…that's really bad," Bonnie said, at a loss for words.

_And that's the understatement of the year._

"We…we need Klaus's blood to heal you and he's all the way in New Orleans and we're here… _in an entirely different dimension,"_ Bonnie continued.

"Yep."

"Okay, so we got…what? Three days? Four?" She asked, trying to focus her rapidly moving thoughts. "We'll have to find a way out of here and then pray that Klaus is actually willing to help us."

"Yeah, not to be a downer, but we spent four  _years_ in another dimension without being able to find a way out," Damon pointed out. "How are going to do it in just a few  _days_?"

"Well, for one, we actually still have magic in this dimension, unlike the one we got sent to when the Other Side collapsed," Bonnie replied.

The only thing was…she had no idea what sort of spell or whatever could possibly get them out of here.

 _Think, think,_ she urges herself.  _There had to be_ _ **something.**_

And then it hit her like a ton of bricks.

"Dominic!" She exclaimed. "He time traveled and, if you want to get technical, time  _is_ a dimension of sorts. So if we can get the spell he used, then I could probably tweak it a bit so that it gets us back home!"

"Except, we're here alone and he's back over there…in case you haven't noticed."

"We might be able to send messages back and forth," Bonnie said, ignoring Damon's snide tone. "When Rose kidnapped Elena all those years ago, I was able to get a message to her. I don't know if it'll work across dimensions, but it's definitely worth a try.

* * *

"This is either a really good idea or a really stupid one," Caroline hissed.

They were currently in the hedges outside Jacqueline's apartment window, eavesdropping on the conversation she was having with her future self.

"If we get caught, we're really dead," she added.

"I know," Stefan whispered back. "But we need to know exactly what happened."

" _Considering you made it back in one peace, I take it that you were successful?"_ They heard the younger Jacqueline say.

" _I'm not sure,"_ the other woman replied.  _"Things didn't exactly go as planned."_

" _Meaning?"_

" _I stabbed Salvatore with werewolf venom and placed him in another dimension. He was supposed to die there slowly, painfully, and_ _ **alone.**_ _But Bonnie fucking Bennett managed to jump into the spell last minute."_

The trio in the bushes all exchanged looks upon that latest news.

"Okay, so it didn't exactly go according to plant," the younger Jacqueline said. "But, werewolf venom only takes a few day to work, so…"

"But there's a chance that she'll find a way out for them," the older Jacqueline growled. "I should have just staked him or cut off his head. I had the chance, but I wanted him to suffer," she said bitterly. "But maybe with some luck, he'll kill the little Bennett bitch when the hallucinations start and he'll die as well…"

Caroline looked over at Stefan, wide-eyed. He nudged her and indicated that they'd heard enough and it was time to go.

"Okay," Caroline said, trying not to panic. "We got like…three days to figure out how to get them back. That's…it's…"

"We're screwed," Dominic helpfully supplied.

"Not necessarily," Stefan said. "Bonnie and Damon are smart. They might figure a way out. In the meantime, we'll try to find a way, too." Pause. "Care, why don't you call Enzo and Ric and fill them in on what happened? We're going to need as much help as we can get."

* * *

"Did it go through?" Damon asked Bonnie when the note she had written disappeared in a ball of flame.

She opened her eyes to look at him. Her nose didn't start bleeding, but the spell had still been a bit exhausting since she was trying to reach someone who was in a while other dimension.

"Well, it definitely went  _somewhere,_ " Bonnie replied. "But I guess we won't know for sure unless he gets back to us."

She looked Damon over. His coloring was still off, but he still seemed to have his faculties about him at least.

"I'm going to check that we still have a fridge full of blood," Damon said, getting up from his seat at the kitchen table.

Thankfully, other than the fact that there were no people, everything seemed the same. The place, the date, everything. Her mug from that morning before Jacqueline stuck them was still sitting in the kitchen sink and everything.

Although, since there were no people in this dimension to have given blood, maybe the fridge downstairs was empty…that would have just been the icing on this shitty cake.

And Bonnie couldn't help but wonder why the witch from the future had gone through the trouble of creating such and elaborate plan. Not to mention, she had done a frighteningly good job of surprising them even with the wards she had set up around the boardinghouse. She could have staked Damon instead of stabbing him with werewolf venom and sending him somewhere else.

 _She wanted him to suffer,_ Bonnie realized.  _But why? What could me or Damon have done to make her hate us so much? And does Dominic fit in to the reason why in some way?_

She watched as Damon came back up with a blood bag in hand and poured it in a class.

"How do you feel?" Bonnie asked.

"It's not unbearable. At least not right away," he said. "It burns a little bit, but you probably wouldn't think anything of it if you haven't experienced it before."

"But?"

"By tomorrow morning, I'll probably be burning up. I'll crave a lot more blood and by the afternoon, the hallucinations will probably begin. And then, I'll probably start getting violent."

She bit her lip and looked away before squaring her shoulders and looking back at him.

"Look, I know this seems really bad. Because, well, it is, but we're going to figure it out. I mean, we've been through so many impossible situations before…"

Damon doesn't reply.

* * *

"You know," Enzo said, sitting back with his arms crossed. "You'd think at some point things would just stop getting weird."

 _You don't even know the half of it,_ Caroline thought. They had decided not to mention to Enzo or Ric that Dominic also happened to be Bonnie and Damon's son. More so because Enzo was a bit of a gossip and would probably let the cat out of the bag…she supposed that that had more to do with him spending fifty years in a cell with hardly ever anyone to really talk to.

"Well, we're going to need all hands on deck to help us out," Caroline said, gesturing to the boxes full of grimoires.

They were the ones that Bonnie had acquired after the Martins' death. She thought it'd be a good idea to pick them up from Bonnie's house and see if there was anything of use in any of them.

"And, in the meantime, I'm going to make a call to Klaus to see if he's willing to give us his blood to cure the werewolf venom she infected Damon with," Caroline continued. She grimaced, recalling the game of rock, paper, scissors she'd lost against Stefan when deciding who got to make  _that_ call.

She moves over to the other side of the room, sitting down and pulling out her cellphone.

"Well, I certainly wasn't expecting to hear from you again within this century, love," Klaus said when he picked up the phone.

"We need your help," she said, cutting the chase. "Well, not so much your help, but your blood."

"Who got bit by a werewolf now?" He sounded so very amused by the situation.

"It's for Damon," Caroline responded tightly. "He and Bonnie sort of found themselves in a spot of trouble." And, boy, wasn't that an understatement.

"Hmm, well seeing as I never did like him…why would I want to help?"

Caroline half-sighed, half-growled. "What do you want?"

Klaus hummed, clearly thinking it over. "Let's just say that Bonnie will owe me a magical favor some time."

"I can't promise something on Bonnie's behalf," Caroline replied with a frown. "Besides, considering she's saved your life more than once, I don't think she owes you anything."

"Do you want my blood or not?"

"Fine. Have fun answering to Bonnie," Caroline said, exasperating.

"I'll have someone deliver it to you by tomorrow," he told her. "Or you could always come pay a visit to New Orleans."

"Not a chance in hell," she replied. Sighing, she shook her head as she ended the call. That had actually been a lot less painless than she'd thought it would be. Now, if they could find a way to bring Bonnie and Damon back, everything would be okay.

Looking over at Dominic, she saw him seemingly pull a wad of paper from his pocket, looking confused.

"What's that?" Caroline asked, nodding at the crumpled up piece of paper.

"A note from Bonnie!" He said, clearly amazed.

Caroline zipped over to the couch to look over his shoulder.

"She thinks that if she has my time travel spell, she can modify it to get her and Damon back here."

"Well, I guess that would make sense," Ric said. "I mean, if they got placed in another dimension and time itself is a dimension…"

"But we don't know that it'll work for sure," Enzo pointed out.

"We can't ever be sure about anything, but at least this gives them a solid chance," Caroline argued.

Dominic stood up and frantically dug around for something to write with.

"There might be a setback, though," he said as he began writing back to Bonnie. "This spell takes  _a lot_  of power, so she'll have to find something substantial to channel like a celestial event, or a magical object, or something that she can draw power from. Or else it'll kill her."

"And if she can't find something in time…" Stefan trailed off.

"Damon'll be screwed," Enzo finished.

* * *

"Stop staring at me. It's creepy," Damon said, not opening his eyes. He was sitting back in an armchair with a bottle of bourbon while Bonnie went back and forth between looking through her grimoire and staring him down. He could practically feel her eyes boring into him.

"I'm not staring," Bonnie replied defensively.

He opened his eyes and looked at her, raising his eyebrows.

"Okay, well maybe I'm a bit. Occasionally," Bonnie admitted, squirming a little in her position on the couch. "I don't mean to…but I'm just worried, okay?"

"What happened to your little heartfelt 'we'll get through this' speech?" He asked dryly.

She opened her mouth to respond, but is cut off by Damon leaning over and thrusting a bottle of bourbon at her.

"Yeah, no. One of us needs to stay sober," Bonnie said sardonically.

"Why? What else are going to do other than sit around and hope something good actually happens to us for once?"

"Really? What, you think I'm sitting around here getting paper cuts and possibly gangrene from a hundred and sixty year old grimoire for  _fun_?"

She looked back down at her grimoire and saw out of the corner of her eyes something that was white. Nudged just under her thigh was a piece of paper.

"Is that…?" Damon asked, watching her scramble to unfold the paper.

"Yeah, yeah, it is," Bonnie said excitedly. "It worked! It actually worked!"

Damon quickly got up and sat down next to her.

"The spell looks pretty doable. There's a potion involved, but the ingredients are simple enough to get and if I change some of the words…"

"But," Damon said, pointing out the warning Dominic had written at the bottom of the letter. "You need to find an extra power source to channel or it'll kill you."

"Okay, so…" Bonnie quickly ran her mind through anything that could give her a power boost.

She didn't know of any magical object they could get. There were no people are animals she could channel for extra energy. There were plants she could channel, but chances were that a whole forest might not be enough. Damon was a vampire and technically dead, so she couldn't channel him. She could find an object like a necklace or something and channel her magic in it every day until she had enough but that could take way too long. A celestial event could work…

 _There's a lunar eclipse three night from now,_ she remembered. It was the perfect source.  _Except, that's cutting it_ _ **way**_ _too close and Damon might not make it that long._

She told Damon so.

"I can try the spell anyway," she told him. "I've grown a lot stronger over the years and—"

"No," he replied adamantly. "We can't risk that. I'll just have to keep myself alive until the eclipse."

"Okay, well maybe I can find some way to slow the venom down…"

She walked over to one of the desk that sat on the other side of the room, pulling out pen and paper to write back to Dominic and the others to let them know.

As she wrote, Bonnie found herself biting on her lop. They actually had a glimmer of hope of making it out of here alive, but it was a thin hope.


	10. Chapter 10

The last person Caroline expected to show up with Klaus's blood was Klaus himself.

"What can I say?" He said with a smug smile when her jaw dropped upon sigh of him. "I got curious."

"Yeah, well Bonnie and Damon aren't here, so you can just drop off your blood and leave," Caroline hissed.

"Now, where's the fun in that?" Klaus replied, brushing by her to step inside. "And you might sound more appreciative, considering I'm doing you a favor…speaking of, if Damon is supposedly suffering from a werewolf bite, why would he be running around with Bonnie?"

"It's a long story that's unbelievable, even by our standards," Stefan supplied, stepping into the foyer.

"If I'm about to graciously give you my blood—"

Caroline snorted.

"Yeah, so graciously that you're demand a favor to hold over Bonnie's head," she muttered.

"If I'm about to graciously give you my blood," Klaus continued, ignoring Caroline's snide comment and the eye roll she exchanged with Stefan. "I believe I'm entitled to an explanation."

"Okay," Caroline snapped. "A crazy whack job came from about sixteen years in the future to settle some insane grudge she has against Bonnie and Damon. She poisoned Damon with werewolf venom, threw him in another dimension, and Bonnie accidentally came along with him for the ride. But she's confident that she can bring both of them back, but that still leaves the problem of the werewolf venom," Caroline explained rapidly, not even pausing to take a breath.

"Hmm…you lot do find yourself in the strangest situations," Klaus said dryly, side-stepping Caroline and Stefan and heading down into the living room.

"Any reason you came here in person to find all this out?" Stefan asked dryly, following the original hybrid.

"Boredom, curiosity. I like to keep tabs on these sorts of things…just in case they can affect me or my own adversely in any way." Pause. "You're new," he said, looking over at Dominic.

Dominic looked at Klaus warily, recalling some of the stories he had been told. Enzo just raised his eyebrows at Klaus before shrugging and going back to finishing a bottle of Damon's favorite bourbon.

Klaus picked up with of the crystal glasses by a decanter filled with liquor, then he bit deeply into his wrist, allowing his blood to spill into the glass.

"Let Bonnie know I'll be cashing in on that favor some time," Klaus told Caroline with a wink, handing her the now half-full tumbler. And with that, he was gone.

"That was strange," Enzo said dryly.

"It's Klaus. He's probably just senile by now," Stefan said with a shrug.

* * *

Bonnie found herself waking up on the couch with a stiff neck and sore back. Groaning, she forced herself up into a seated position, feeling her joints creak slightly.

Damon was nowhere in sight and that worried her. Getting up, she thinks about where he'd most likely be. When she poked her head into the kitchen, she sees Damon standing there, flipping a pancake with one hand while sucking down a blood bag with another. There were several empty blood bags littering the counter.

_Okay, not a good sign._

"Hey, she said, entering the kitchen and taking a seat. She looked him over. He was even paler and the sheen of sweat that made his skin shine told her that he was burning up.

"You look horrible," she told him bluntly.

"Funny. I feel like  _shit,"_ he replied with a scoff. He places a plate of pancakes down in front of her.

"I think maybe I can slow it down with some cleansing herbs. I mean, it's hard to know exactly  _what_ would work best because nobody really knows  _how_ werewolf venom works or why Klaus's blood is the cure for it, but it's better than nothing," Bonnie said, pushing the pancakes around on the plate with a fork. "I still think we're cutting it to close by waiting for this lunar eclipse."

"Yeah, well there's nothing we can do about that," he said. "Although, if we make it out of this one, I'm going to personally hunt that little bitch down and every single version I can find of her, present and otherwise, and she won't be a problem ever again."

"No," Bonnie said automatically. "Look, I'm not stupid or naïve enough to think that future Jacqueline isn't going to try something again and if it comes down to us or her, then I understand we'll have to kill her. But we don't know anything about Jacqueline at the present. We don't know for sure if she's in cahoots with her future self, we don't know what makes her this way. Maybe we can prevent her from becoming that way."

Damon frowned, but ripped into another blood bag. As usual, he'd make the tough decisions if he has to. Because he was sure that if they managed to survive this one, they'd find out that this was just a warm up act for that crazy witch.

Things always got worse before they got better.

"This is kinda like old times, isn't it?" he said.

"No, not really," Bonnie said dryly, looking pointedly at the blood bags all over the kitchen.

"No need to be a buzzkill."

 _Well, at least he still has his crappy sense of humor,_ Bonnie thought sardonically.

* * *

Caroline had always hated waiting for  _anything._  In fact, in grade school, she would always cut in line for everything and when the teachers tried to make her go back, she'd throw such a fit that they couldn't do anything with her.

She kinda felt like throwing a fit now.

After years without doom and gloom, only to be faced with this…God, they'd never catch a break would they?

And what if this was really it? What if Damon died for real? Stefan wouldn't survive it. Not again.

And then there was Dominic…

She looked over at him. He had been sullen and brooding ever since they found out what had happened to Bonnie and Damon. He was obviously still kicking himself over all of this.

"You've gotta find a way to let it go," she said aloud. "I'm not going to pretend that I fully know everything you've gone through…you keep a lot of things to yourself, which I guess you must have gotten from Bonnie, now that I think about it." She smiles wryly. "And whether you do it to protect us or yourself, I don't know. But what I do know is that you can't keep putting the burden of everything on yoursel. Everything that's happened is  _not_ your fault. And if you keep dragging yourself around like this…it can kill you."

He doesn't respond.

"Now, I'm going to go to sleep and I suggest you do the same. Tomorrow night, Bonnie and Damon will be back here and then we can go back to making sure that you're actually born."

She didn't know if anything she said actually stuck, but she really hoped so.

He was just a year younger than she had been when she became a vampire and Bonnie discovered she was a witch and they learned how crazy the world really was. Except, he'd been dealing with this stuff since the day he was born.

"You were pretty good down there," Stefan said, when she entered their bedroom. He was shirtless with pajama pants on and toweling his hair dry from his shower.

"Yeah, well, hopefully it sunk in. But I'll keep saying it to him over and over again if I have to." She flopped down onto their bed with a sigh.

"Do you ever think about it?" He asked, laying down next to her. "About kids?"

She bit her lips and shrugged.

"Yeah, a little. I always figured if we wanted to, we could adopt," she told him softly, curling up into his arms. "Although, realistically, all the diapers and snot and stuff is just not for me…but they wouldn't have to be a baby. A lot of children that aren't babies need good homes, too."

Stefan smiled and began to stroke her hair.

"I don't know," she continued. She tilted her head upwards to look at him. "Maybe someday, far down the road." She lifted her head up to look at Stefan. "What about you? Have you ever…?"

"When I was human…" he began. "Damon was expected to inherit the estate if our father didn't disown him, which he actually seemed ready to do more than once…but if Damon had inherited the estate, I would have been expected to take up what was considered a respectable profession, like a lawyer or a doctor. I had planned on being a doctor, actually," he explained. "Then, I would have been expected to marry and have children." Pause. "And then I became a vampire and none of that was no longer an option. And even if it was…I was just too unpredictable, too volatile."

"But what about now? Would you ever want to?"

"Maybe," he replied. "How about we survive this and then talk about it again?"

"Sounds good with me," she said with a smile, snuggling back into him. "But I say that we also take a nice, long vacation to the Bahamas or somewhere that has a nice sunny beach when this is all over."

* * *

All her fingernails had been bitten down to nothing by now, but she kept chewing at them anyway.

Tomorrow night, they'd be going home. The herbs Bonnie has been using seemed to keep Damon from having hallucinations at the very least, but the blood cravings would come and go and it was obvious that he felt miserable.

God, she really hoped they'd make it in time. She doesn't know what she'd do if…

"D'you ever think about it?" Damon asked suddenly, breaking the silence.

"Think about what?" Bonnie asked, looking over at him. He was sitting on the other side of the couch, bourbon in one hand, a half-empty blood bag in the other.

"That night. Well, I guess it was more than one night," he said. "But beyond the occasional slip-up mention, do you ever think about it?"

Bonnie blinked, her eyes widening a little bit. Why would he bring  _that_ up so suddenly?

"I do," he continued, not waiting for her response. "More than I'd like to."

Bonnie found herself speechless as her mind drifted back.

" _Do you really think we'll be stuck here forever?" Bonnie asked Damon with a sigh._

" _Have we been given a reason to believe otherwise?" Damon replied dryly._

" _I don't know. I just can't help but feel like there's some sort of loophole we haven't figured out yet."_

" _We've been here for two years and we're human here…what the hell kind of loophole could there be?" He pointed out._

_Bonnie sighed again. He had a point. And she supposed the circumstances could have been worse than they actually were._

_Still, though, she missed home._

" _You know, I never understood it," he said, his icy blue eyes piercing hers._

" _There's a lot you don't understand," Bonnie said dryly. "But what are you talking about?"_

" _You're worth the whole damn lot of us."_

_Bonnie frowned. Quoting the Great Gatsby…really? Could he be any more dramatic?_

" _You're worth the whole damn lot of us and then some. We've all taken you for granted…you never would have wound up here if that weren't the case. Why stick around through it all?"_

_She gaped at him, wondering just how drunk he was. He never cared about her sacrificing everything because it had always benefited him._

" _Where would I have gone?" She found herself replying before she really even thought about it. "Besides, I wouldn't have kept doing the things I did if I didn't think you were all worth it on some level. The teeniest, tiniest, microscopic level in your case."_

_Damon snorted and shook his head._

" _You're too good," he said finally. "That's the problem. You're too damn good."_

" _Sometimes I kinda wish I wasn't," she admitted. She reached over, plucking the bourbon bottle out of his hands to take a drink herself. "But the whole 'having an overactive conscience' thing can really fuck you up."_

_Damon chuckled._

_They pass the bottle back and forth, engaging in lighter conversation. It was crazy to think of how much things had changed between them._

_Still, though, it didn't stop her head from swimming when he suddenly leaned over and pressed his lips against hers in a deep kiss._

" _What are you doing?" She asked when they part._

" _I would really hope that's self-explanatory," he replied._

" _You're drunk."_

" _No, I'm not."_

" _ **I'm**_ _drunk."_

" _No, you're not."_

" _Fine. Buzzed. Point is we really shouldn't be doing things that we'll regret later," Bonnie told him._

" _Who says we'll regret it?" He asked, brushing some of her hair out of her eyes. His touch feels like it sets her skin on fire. "Do you really want to stop?"_

_Was she really going to do this? She'd be lying to herself if she said she hadn't thought about it at least once. There was no denying he was attractive (a gross understatement there) and there had always been this strange underlying tension between the two of them (granted, it was a tension that had the tendency to manifest itself in arguments and occasional violence, but still)._

_This time she pressed her lips to his._

_One night. Just one night to get it out of their systems and they would never speak of it again._

Except it hadn't been one night, Bonnie recalled. It had gone on for months before she finally decided to break it off for good.

She never believed it would work between them. Because of who they were. Being able to be kinda sorta friends was one thing. Lovers? That was a whole other deal. And, if she was being honest, the thought scared her a little.

To her surprise, though, all the reasons she had for not sleeping with Damon before had nothing to do with either Elena or Jeremy. And there was something strangely liberating about that.

Eventually, they had miraculously come back into their own world. And Elena had moved on with Tyler and they had both moved onto Denver. And then Jeremy had joined them and found some girl in art school.

And she had actually been okay with that. Because how could she have expected them to wait around? Especially, when she had never planned on returning.

Damon had taken that new development with grace as well, a testament to how far he had come.

She'd thrown herself back into getting that life she so desperately wanted. Her undergrad was finished and now she was set to enter medical school in a few weeks…if she made it out of this particular disaster, that is.

Up until now, her life had been good or normal.

"How drunk are you?" Bonnie asked finally.

"I'm not drunk," Damon scoffed. "I'm dying…it tends to bring out all sorts of deep dark confessions from me apparently."

Silence.

"Thing is every once in a while, I think about that first night, the months that came after more than I like. And sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we didn't give it up after a few months. Do you?"

"Honestly? Not very often. But every once in a while, yeah," Bonnie admitted. "Why bring this up now?"

"Seems as a good a time as any," Damon said with a shrug. "That or I may be delirious, who knows?" Pause. "Sometimes, after we came back, I would sometimes think about convincing you to give it another go…but you were finally getting your life together and I didn't want to ruin that for you."

Looking at him, speechless once again, Bonnie finds herself scooching closer to him on the couch.

They look at each other, unsure of what comes next.

Then, before she really even thinks about it, she's kissing him.

It's different than that firs time on the other side all those years ago. Back then, it had been surprising and curious. This time, there was a sense of familiarity and desperation.

They pull apart and looked at each other for a short moment, blue piercing green, and then their lips met again and again.

* * *

The sunlight streaming in from the giant windows made Bonnie groan and blink blearily as she started to wake up.

Looking around, she didn't see Damon anywhere.

She looked through the assortment of clothes that had ended up all over the living room to find something to cover herself with. Pulling on Damon's black button down, she began to search for him.

She found him in the bathroom, naked and vomiting up all the blood he's recently consumed.

"Fuck," Bonnie swore and quickly moved to grab some towels to help him clean up.

Then, she helped him up and got him back to the living room, intending to deposit him on the couch.

All the while, the only thing Damon could think about was how much he wanted blood. It would be so easy, so easy to just grab her and sink his teeth into that precious little vein in her neck. Her blood would slide down his throat all nice and warm and delicious.

Growling, he shoved her away from him.

"Wh—"

"I really wanna drain you dry," he panted.

She blinked, not knowing how to respond to that.

"If—if I attack you, you have to stop me."

"I'm not killing you."

"Do be so dramatic," he groaned, flopping onto the couch. "You're a witch. Aneurism me into unconsciousness or something."

"Oh," she said, feeling a little stupid. "Right, of course."

She grabbed a blanket and covered him up with it. He was basically unconscious now.

Tonight, she would be able to perform the spell that would hopefully send them home. She just really hoped that a few more hours wouldn't be too late for Damon.

* * *

She managed to clean up and find a change of clothes for herself as well as Damon and she forced him awake when it was time.

She can't help but blush every time she remembered last night's events. Sleeping with Damon while he was dying was definitely not one of her brighter moments…

But for now, getting them home was more important.

She took the potion she had made and poured it around them.

"Okay," Bonnie said, taking Damon's hands in hers. The eclipse was up and it was time. "Let's go home."

She began to chant and felt a slight tugging sensation. The spell was working!

When she opened her eyes again, Damon collapsed into her.

"Stefan! Caroline!" Bonnie yelled, sinking to her knees with Damon still in her arms. "Please, tell me you convinced Klaus to give you his blood."

"Here," Stefan said, rushing over to him. He helped Damon, tipping a glass of blood against his lips.

"I am so over this kind of bullshit," Damon muttered, pulling away from Bonnie and Damon to lean against the wall.

Snorting, Bonnie nodded.

Unfortunately, though, they all knew it wasn't going to end there.


	11. Chapter 11

The next weeks went by quiet and that's what worried Bonnie. Things had been quiet for weeks before Jacqueline's last attack.

Did the future Jacqueline know she and Damon had survived? If so, what would be her next move?

Caroline had explained to her that the present Jacqueline was in contact with her future self, but didn't exactly seem all that thrilled by it. And, honestly, Bonnie wasn't sure what to think of that.

On the upside, she was set to begin med school in about two weeks. She had ultimately chosen the closest school, making it easy to commute back and forth. She had no idea how she was going to balance med school and this latest crisis, though.

"You looking like a pack mule," Caroline said as she watched Bonnie enter the boardinghouse.

The witch was loaded down with books and papers that she had picked up at orientation.

"Remind me why I wanted to do this again?" Bonnie asked dryly as she set her load down on the coffee table with a thump.

Caroline just gave a wry smiled before returning to that contemplative look she had before Bonnie came in.

"What's with your face?" Bonnie asked.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what I said. What's with your face?"

"I'm thinking."

"About?"

"Just thinking."

 _Thinking about how I'm supposed to help you and Damon get laid so that you can somehow magically have a baby,_ Caroline mentally screamed.

"Me, too," Bonnie admitted. "That whole thing that went down with me and Damon…that was really close. And I have a feeling that whatever she cooks up next…it'll be even harder to get out of."

 _You and me both,_ Caroline thought.

* * *

"Hey," Bonnie called out when Damon walked into the boardinghouse late at night.

She was reading one of her massive textbooks. Med school was starting in just a few days, but she was going to get as much of a jump start as possible since, with her luck, life was bound to get crazy again as usual.

"Where is everyone?" Damon asked with a frown.

"Stefan and Caroline are out for the night…they kinda didn't want to leave after what happened last time, but I made them. And Dominic's upstairs," she replied with a shrug.

"They left you to babysit?"

"He's sixteen," Bonnie said, rolling her eyes. "He doesn't need a babysitter. And I still don't get what you have against him…considering it was  _his_ spell that helped me figure out how to get us out of that other dimension." Pause. "He's been very quiet lately, though. I'm a little worried about him."

Damon didn't respond.

Watching him as he poured himself a drink, Bonnie took a deep breath. They had never talked about what happened in that other dimension, and it had happened about a month ago, but it was now or never. Except, she didn't even know what she thought or felt about it all.

"About what happened over…when we…" she trailed off as he looked at her with raised eyebrows.

"Never mind," she muttered lamely.

"I don't regret it if that's what you're wondering," he told her before taking a sip of his bourbon.

"Okay…it's I don't know what you're expecting or—"

"I'm not," he interrupted. "I'm not expecting anything."

"Okay," she said, nodding. "It's just that between med school and angry time traveling witches…"

"You don't have to justify anything," he said shortly.

Bonnie silenced herself.

Was he angry at her?

 _No,_ she realized, watching him.  _He's pulling a classic Damon where he doesn't want to show he cares._

Thing is, she didn't know what to do with that information. She didn't know what she wanted when it came to Damon.

As he lifted his glass to his mouth, he frowned.

There was a third heartbeat in the room and since Dominic was upstairs, he was sure it wasn't him.

There was someone else in the room.

Spinning around, he looked for where the intruder could possibly be. With their luck, they were probably doing what the Martins did and were using magic to pull an invisible man routine.

"Oh no," Bonnie said, shutting her textbook and putting it to the side before sitting stick-straight. "You got that look on your face. What's wrong?"

"There's someone else in here."

"What?"

"I hear another heartbeat—there's someone here."

"No. My wards would have let me known if someone else was in here," Bonnie said, standing up.

Shaking his head, Damon focused on the sound. He then realized it was actually coming from Bonnie. There was a second heartbeat, just a little out of sync with hers.

_Wait, that's not possible. Not unless she's…_

He swore he must have blacked out for a minute or something.

"Damon?" Bonnie said, stepping closer to him. "Damon, what's—"

"You," he breathes, staring down at her still-flat tummy as if he could somehow see through it. "Y-You're pregnant."

She went cold.

"No, that's not…I mean…"

 _We were trapped in another dimension when we…maybe the rules were different there._   _And you skipped your period…granted, you figured that was just stress, but…_

And then something else clicked in her mind. And suddenly everything made sense.

Dominic was half-vampire, half-witch. Jacqueline targeted her first and then Damon.

She could almost kick herself at how obvious it had all ben.

"Dominic," Bonnie murmured with wide eyes, placing a hand on her stomach. "It's Dominic."

Looking at Damon, she can see a flicker of recognition in his eyes as well.

They turn when they hear a noise on the steps.

"Hey," Dominic said nervously.

* * *

Jacqueline is awoken to the sound of her cell phone ringing.

 _Who the hell would be calling me at this hour?_ She wondered.

Her cell phone screen told her that it was her mother. She felt her heart sink, knowing that it must be an emergency of some sort.

"Mom? What's wrong?" Jacqueline asked, her voice still filled with sleep.

"Come home now. Emergency coven business."

Despite not having heard from her future counterpart in weeks, Jacqueline had a feeling she knew exactly what this was about.

* * *

"I—I don't even know where to begin," Bonnie breathed as Dominic came down the stairs.

This was her son standing right in front of her.

She understood why he kept it all a secret…because never in a million years—even with being so immersed in the supernatural—would she have believed this possible.

"You're…you're…" she couldn't even get the words out.

"Yeah," he said, fidgeting a little and looking sheepish.

"Hey!" Caroline exclaimed when she and Stefan walked through the door, a big grin on her face. She paused. "What's going on?"

"Did you know?" Bonnie asked Caroline, looking between her and Dominic.

"Know what?" Caroline asked, confused.

"Yes," Stefan said.

"Wow," Bonnie whispered, stunned as she sank down onto the couch with her hand still on her stomach.

"Wait," Caroline said, stepping down into the living room. "Are you—?"

"Yeah, apparently. We were in a different dimension, so I guess the rules must work differently there. That's the only thing I can think of."

Caroline smiled and sat down next to Bonnie.

"I can hear the heartbeat," she says with a big smile. And then she began laughing hysterically.

Everyone in the room just stared at her.

"I'm sorry," the blonde squealed in between laughs. "It's just that me and Stefan have spent the better part of a month and some odd weeks, figuring out how we were gonna get you two to…y'know." She broke off into more hysterical laughter. "There's just too much delicious irony in the fact that the psycho future-witch who was trying to stop this actually kinda pushed it forward."

Bonnie looked at the hysterical blonde, mouth open. Then, shaking her head, she looked over at Damon.

He was standing there, stock-still like a statue.

"Wow," Bonnie whispered again.

* * *

When she entered her childhood home, Jacqueline wasn't surprised to see most of the coven gathered there. She wasn't even surprised that her future self was there.

"I believe you know what this is about," her father said gravely.

"Look, I don't know what she told you, but…"

"She told us everything and you should not have kept it from us."

"But…"

She looked around at the faces of her coven.

"Can I speak with you in private? Please?"

Her father was obviously reluctant, but he acquiesced to her request. Entering his office, which had been magically soundproofed, she chose her next words carefully.

"Dad, I know everything she's told you—well, what  _I_ told you, God, this gets so confusing—and I know you have a responsibility to look after the coven—our family, but…how do you know that this isn't exactly how everything happens? That prophecy in Clara's grimoire…what if it's self-fulfilling because of us?"

"We cannot afford to take that risk. Nature's balance  _must_ be preserved," her father replied adamantly. "However, I would like to make an attempt to keep the peace. You will go to Bonnie Bennett and make this offer: If she'll terminate the pregnancy, we'll let the matter drop. We'll even welcome her into the coven. She's a formidable witch from one of the oldest bloodlines in the world. I'm sure one of your cousins would be thrilled to take her as a wife."

Jacqueline's eyes widened.

"Is this even about supposedly protecting the coven or are you just trying to gain more power by having a Bennett under your thumb? I mean, all this—some twisted future version of your daughter telling you tales, some outdated prophecy that is barely even clear—it provides a convenient cover, doesn't it? It's no secret that the original Klaus Mikaelson has a daughter who has witch, vampire,  _and_ werewolf blood in her, that he himself is a hybrid. If this had anything to do with nature's balance or fear of any one being having too much power, you would have done something  _years_ ago."

Her father slammed his hands down on the table loudly, causing Jacqueline to flinch.

"You are next in line to lead this coven…a fact I have considered remedying for years. When opportunities are provided, you must learn to take them."

 _He's not even trying to hide that this is a power play,_ Jacqueline thought, half astonished.

"Now, will you do your duty or will I be forced to take measures against you?"


	12. Chapter 12

"You keep staring at me," Dominic told Bonnie a couple mornings later at breakfast.

"I know. It's kinda creepy. I get it," Bonnie said. "And I know it's been a few days, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around all of this! I mean, you're my son!"

"Yeah," he said shortly.

"I just…I want to know everything," she said. "Your birthday, your favorite color…"

Before Dominic can respond to her, Damon came in. He had literally been out all night…and every night since they uncovered the truth. It was pretty obvious he had been working to avoid them as he barely glanced at them before grabbing a blood bag from the fridge and walking out.

"I don't think it's quite sunk in for him yet, either," Bonnie said with a small frown. "And before we found out, we didn't exactly have the most comfortable con—"

"Don't make excuses for him," Dominic interrupted. He stood up, dropped his dishes in the sink with a clang before walking out.

Bonnie sat there in alone in silence.

"Something wrong?" Caroline asked a few minutes later as she came into the kitchen. "Is it Damon? I'm more than happy to kick his a—"

"No. It's Dominic," Bonnie interjected softly. "I don't think he likes me very much…or Damon for that matter, either."

"What? What makes you say that?"

"Well, he doesn't really seem to want to talk to me and the thing with Damon is pretty obvious." Pause. "Are we horrible parents or something? Did he say something to you?"

"He keeps a lot to himself," Caroline replied, sitting down with a mug of coffee in her hand. "And it goes without saying that he's had a really hard time of it. He blames himself for how bad the future is…"

"I really wish Grams were here to give me some advice," Bonnie admitted. "She'd know exactly what to say and do…after she was done ripping me a new one about getting into bed with Damon."

Caroline laughed, before replying, "Look, I get that you had sucky parents, but your Grams was amazing and you are way more like her than you ever were your parents."

Bonnie bit her lip, picking at her toast, unable to quell her worries. Finally she sighed and grabbed her bag.

"I've got some paperwork to go drop off," she explained to Caroline.

"Wait, I thought you were enrolled in school and everything," Caroline said with a frown.

"I'm dropping out."

Caroline's eyes widened and she started to protest, but Bonnie quickly interrupted her.

"Look, with a baby on the way and a psycho witch from the future that's clearly not going to stop trying to ensure that I don't have this baby…there's no way I'm going to make it through med school right now," Bonnie said. "I already missed the first day."

"Yeah, but…you worked so hard for this," Caroline told her.

"I know. And, honestly, if it was just me having a baby minus this whole futuristic mess, I'd find a way to manage it, but there's just too much going on," Bonnie explained. "But it's not forever. I worked way too hard to not see it through."

"Fine. But if you're not back in school within a year, I'm personally dragging you down there by the hair," Caroline informed her.

* * *

"I can't believe you actually went to the coven and told them everything," Jacqueline fumed at her future self. "Well, actually, I can. But what I don't get is how you're so unbelievable blind."

The future witch cock an eyebrow, looking half-amused.

"Don't you see? You're the one causing everything to happen! Odds are, wherever you placed Bonnie and Damon probably had an entirely different set of rules that allowed them to conceive in the first place. You got the coven riled up about now…everything is literally going the way you said it would, except all of it is being caused by  _you."_

"I'm well aware of that."

"Are you?"

"We're just going to have to be very good at convincing Bonnie to take your father's deal, now aren't we?"

The younger Jacqueline couldn't help but grimace. The choice her father expected her to present to Bonnie was  _disgusting_ (actually, it was worse than that, but she couldn't think of a worse word at the moment). Telling her that she had better terminate her pregnancy and then be forced into joining their coven or else?

How was she supposed to look someone in the eye and present them with a choice like that?

* * *

Bonnie can't help but feel her stomach drop out from under her when she opened the door to see Jacqueline—the one from the present—standing there.

"I—I'm not here to hurt you," she said quickly and quietly, holding her hands up. "I'm just here to talk."

Bonnie bit her lip nervously. She remembered telling more than once that she didn't think (or know) if the present Jacqueline was culpable in all this. But was she willing to put that to the test now?

"You should know," she added. "I cast a spell so the others won't hear us. I just…this is already hard enough…"

"At the risk of being rude: Whatever you need to say, just come out and say it."

Swallowing heavily, Jacqueline nodded.

* * *

"How the hell did you get in here?" Dominic asked tightly, his body tight and ready for a fight.

"My present self is downstairs talking to your mother and since we're technically the same person…let's just say it confuses the wards you and your mother set up so nicely," the woman replied nonchalantly. "Don't worry, though. I'm not here to harm you this time. I just want to have a little chat."

* * *

"I don't…I don't agree with any of this," the younger Jacqueline said to Bonnie, looking down at the ground. "But…"

"But it's your family," Bonnie finished for her hollowly.

 _An entire family that I apparently kill,_ Bonnie thought, still reeling from that bit of news.  _An entire family that's trying to get me under their thumb…_

"They don't expect an answer right away, but…"

"We both have a pretty good idea of what my answer will be," Bonnie replied flatly.

The other woman fell silent and stood up.

"Have you ever wondered that maybe everything is happening the way it did before in the future? That nothing is changing? Because what if instead of saving the future, you—well, future you—is causing it all because of some insanely misguided ideas?" Bonnie asked, standing up as well.

The flicker in Jacqueline's eyes answered that question for Bonnie.

"I know they're your family, but maybe you should ask yourself if you're really willing to become that woman because of this," Bonnie added.

Jacqueline's eyes went glassy as if she were about to cry. She looked like she wanted to say more, but instead she nodded and then left.

Bonnie blew out a shaky breath and sat down, trying to sort out all the crazy thought in her head.

"You should seriously consider that offer," Dominic said.

Bonnie looked up in surprise to see him at the top of the stairs. Jacqueline had said that no one could hear them down here.

"Wh—"

"It would make things easier on all of us," he continued.

"Easier? But…you wouldn't even be born then!" Bonnie protested.

"It would make things easier on  _all_ of us," he repeated before turning around and heading back upstairs.

Bonnie sat there feeling like the wind was just knocked out of her.

* * *

He didn't mean to be an asshole. Okay, well ninety-nine percent of the time he did. But this particular instance fell into that one percent category.

But, seriously, he— _Damon fucking Salvatore_ —was going to be a father.

How insane was that?

Kids had  _never_ been on his radar.

Actually, they were back when he was human, before he met Katherine. As the oldest son, it was to be expected for him (unless, of course, his father disowned him first, which would have come as a surprise to no one). But the moment he discovered what she really was, any thoughts of a normal human life (including those involving children) went completely out the window and that was that.

But now…

Christ, he was going to be a father.

And apparently not a very good one, judging by his future son's reaction to him.

His future son…that was a whole other thing he couldn't even begin to sort out in his head.

But, given what his own father had been like, he'd like to think that he could do better, would do better.

 _Maybe being a shitty father is a genetic trait,_ Damon mused.

Sooner or later, he knew he'd have to face Bonnie. Plus, it would be nice if Alaric and Enzo shut up about how he was an asshole who needed to get his shit together (he was pretty sure Caroline put them up to that one).

Not to mention, even though Bonnie had made it pretty clear that she didn't seem all that interested in having a relationship with him, it was undeniable that the fact they were now having a child changed  _everything._

Either way, it was definitely time he finally grew a pair and actually have a talk with Bonnie about all of this.

* * *

"Where exactly are you going?" a heavily accented voice asks from behind her.

He grunted and stumbled when Bonnie sent a wave of pain to his brain.

"Enzo?" She asked. "Dammit, now is  _not_ the time to be sneaking up on me." She held a hand to her chest, trying to still her rapidly beating heart.

"Clearly," Enzo grunted.

"Damon's not here," Bonnie said, assuming that's who he was looking for. She turned back to her car and opened the driver's side door.

"You didn't answer my question, sweetheart," Enzo replied. "Where are you going?"

"Out," Bonnie replied flippantly. "I have some errands to run. Grocery shopping and all sorts of fun things like that."

"You're lying."

"Why would a lie?" Bonnie snapped, turning to face him again.

"You tell me," he replied. He gave her a wry grin and shrugged, the black leather of his jacket crinkling with the motion.

Bonnie let out an irritated sigh. Every second she spent here with Enzo was a second she risked being caught by someone.

"How much do you know about what's going?" Bonnie asked.

"Caroline gave me a call and explained  _everything_ to me in hopes that I'd give Damon a much-needed kick in the ass. I've seen and heard some extraordinary things, but I've got to say…"

"Yeah," Bonnie replied with a small, nervous laugh.

"It certainly got Damon all turned about."

"Look," Bonnie said, not wanting to waste unnecessary time. "I'm kinda freaking out about it all, too, because apparently I'm going to be a horrible mother and my son either A: would rather not be born than have me as a mother or B: I raised him with so little self-worth that he wish he didn't exist." The words come out before she can even stop herself. "And there's someone…a few someones I need to go talk to about this and if I tell anyone before I go, they'll talk me out of it or try and find a way to stop me."

Enzo raised his eyebrows then shrugged again before moving over to the passenger side of her little Prius.

"Wait, you're…uh, no. No, no, no," she said with an incredulous little laugh. "You are  _not_ going with me."

"Why not?"

"Why would you want to?" She countered.

"Curiosity, got nothing better to do…and the fact that the others will want my head on a pike if they found out I knew about this and didn't stop you. At least this way I can say you took me against my will."

Bonnie's lips quirked upwards slightly at that. With another sigh, she looked at the boardinghouse before turning to look at Enzo once again.

"Fine. Get in."

* * *

When he walked into the boardinghouse that evening, Damon was greeted by a distraught-looking Caroline and a grave-looking Stefan.

"Yeah, I really don't like the looks and your faces."

"Bonnie took off!" Caroline said. "She called me saying that she needed to figure some things out, but she wouldn't even tell us  _where_ she was going!"

Damon's eyes widened and his jaw went slack.

 _Has Bonnie completely lost her goddman mind?_ Damon wondered.  _What the hell would possess her to go off_ _ **alone**_ _now of all times?_

He looked over at Dominic who was sitting off to the side and staring into the fire place, clearly trying to avoid taking part in this conversation.

Damon strode over and stood right in front of him.

"What exactly happened?" He asked his son.


	13. Chapter 13

"So, are you going to tell me who's in North Carolina that you so urgently had to see?" Enzo asked, glancing over at Bonnie. She was gripping the steering wheel so tightly, her knuckles were white. She had remained silent the whole drive.

"My mother," Bonnie responded quietly.

Enzo raised his eyebrows. He never heard Bonnie or anyone mention her mother, so he'd always assumed she was dead.

"We have a very complicated relationship," Bonnie said as if reading his mind. "The cliff notes version? She left when I was three, I didn't see her again till fifteen years later, she got turned into a vampire, and we've kind of just been popping in and out of each other's lives since then."

Enzo just sat there in the passenger seat blinking. He was pretty sure that was actually the cliff notes version of the cliff notes version.

"And what answers do you think she's going to give you?" Enzo asked. "Are you so convinced you're going to be a terrible mother because she was? You're nothing like her."

"Yeah, because you would know," Bonnie scoffed as she fumbled with her seatbelt.

"I know you and I've never seen you run away from anything before, no matter how scary it was…well, until now, obviously. But, I do know that if anyone would be a good mother, it would be you."

"It's just…" Bonnie swallowed heavily. "Just stay in the car, okay?" She quickly moved before Enzo could say anything more.

* * *

"What happened?" Damon asked.

Dominic looked up, surprised, as if he thought he would go unnoticed.

"I…" he trailed off. "Jacqueline paid us a visit," he admitted finally.

"What? No?" Caroline said, shaking her head. "We've been here all day. We would have known if she had been here."

"Unless she cast a spell or two so we wouldn't…" Stefan said, frowning.

"Dominic, why wouldn't you say something?" Caroline asked. "She could've—"

"Because I came here to fix all this!" He interjected! "She came here and made my mom an offer: If she doesn't have me, then they'll give her a place in their coven. It would avoid a total war. Do you know how many people won't die?"

"No way," Caroline said, shaking her head. "Hell would freeze over before Bonnie would ever—"

"I told her to take the deal."

"And why the hell would you do that?" Damon asked, eyes widening.

Dominic just shook his head, refusing to meet anybody's eyes.

"Dominic," Caroline began. "We can't help you if—"

"That's just it! You can't help me! You shouldn't!" He snapped, standing up. His hands were shaking. "Don't you understand? So many people are going to die!  _She's_ going to die!"

"You mean Bonnie? Bonnie is going to die?" Caroline whispered, horrified.

"I-I can't I've…I've said too much," Dominic stammered. He moved to leave, but Damon easily stepped in front of him, blocking his path.

"No, you haven't said enough and that's the problem," Damon said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "You don't know what you're doing."

"Don't you dare lecture me," Dominic growled. "Not after you've spent days ignoring everything, ignoring Mom. Not after—" He stopped himself, clenching his jaw tightly.

"After I what?"

"Nothing. It doesn't matter," Dominic muttered, trying to step around Damon. Damon stepped in his path once again.

"Apparently it does because you've made it abundantly clear that you can't stand me. So what did I do?" Damon asked, cocking his head slightly. "Did I take away your favorite toy?"

"Stop."

"Did I give you too many time outs? Grounded you too many times? Took away your car keys?"

"You left!" Dominic yelled before punching him square in the jaw.

The blow wasn't enough to knock Damon down, but it did make him stagger back a couple of steps. His lip split open, but it was a wound that quickly healed.

"Mom died when I was twelve and you couldn't handle it. So you asked Uncle Stefan and Aunt Caroline to take care of me and then you left." Pause. "I don't know I guess you thought you could avenge her death or something, but…we never heard from you again until we found out you got yourself killed a year later."

To say you could hear a pin drop would have been a massive understatement.

The silence was broken by Damon's phone buzzing. Enzo had called him at least three times in the past eight or nine minutes or so. For obvious reasons, Damon kept ignoring it, but Enzo always was a persistent bastard.

"Now is  _really_ not—" Damon began when he answered the phone.

"You might like to know that I'm currently with a certain witch we all know and love."

Damon felt his heart surge.

"Where is she?"

"At her mother's in North Carolina."

"Keep her there. I'm on my way." He hung up the phone before Enzo could say anything else.

He looked at Dominic, wanting to say something, but he honestly couldn't find the words.

"I'm going to bring her back home," was all he said before he left.

* * *

"Bonnie? What's wrong? What are you doing here so late at night?" Abby asked when she opened the front door, clearly surprised.

"I, uh, I…" Bonnie stammered. "I just really needed to talk to you. I'm sorry about just showing up…I'll try night to take too long."

"No, no," Abby said quickly, stepping back and opening the door wider. "Come in."

Bonnie stepped inside and Abby led them to the kitchen.

"Can I get you anything?"

"No. Thanks, but no."

Awkward pause.

Abby floundered a bit, before slowly taking a seat at the kitchen table.

"You're…you're pregnant," Abby said softly.

Figuring, she must hear the baby's heartbeat as well, she replies with a soft, "Yeah," and a small, nervous laugh, placing a hand on her still-flat stomach. "I'm not that far along…only about five or six weeks or so. I probably wouldn't have even realized it quite yet if Damon hadn't heard his heartbeat."

"His?" Abby repeated. "It's a boy?"

Bonnie nodded, but didn't know how to explain why she knew that when it was way too early to tell. The truth was way too complicated to explain right now.

"I'm afraid," Bonnie admitted. "I'm terrified of being a mother because of you. Because I don't want to be you."

She knew her words were cruel and that they must have cut deep, but she couldn't keep them in.

"You won't."

"I mean, I'd never abandon this child.  _Ever._ But…that doesn't mean I'll be a good mother. I didn't have good parents, so…"

Abby scooched her chair closer to Bonnie's, taking the younger witch's hands in her own.

"You are going to be a good mother. And you know why? Because you're not me. You're not your father. You're  _you_ and you are  _not_ bound to the failures of those who came before you," Abby told her sternly.

"How could you do it?" Bonnie asked, feeling the tears prickling her eyes. "How could you have me, see me take my first steps, hear my first words and then just leave as if I didn't matter at all?"

Abby didn't let go of Bonnie's hands, but she didn't respond to that. There was nothing to say, no explanation (not a good one, anyway). She has circled this drain with her daughter over and over again as try as they might, there was simply no closure to it.

"I'm sorry," Bonnie said, quickly wiping away the stray tears. "I just...I'm going to go. I still have to get to New Orleans and…" she trailed off, standing up.

"What are you going to New Orleans for?" Abby asked with a frown, standing up as well.

"It's not a big deal. Don't worry about it," Bonnie replied a little too quickly.

"You're in trouble, aren't you?" Abby could tell by Bonnie's suddenly shifty demeanor. "Tell me. Maybe I can help."

"No, you can't." Taking a deep breath, Bonnie continued, "Klaus had a daughter who has witch, werewolf, and vampire in her. The whole supernatural community in New Orleans fought over what should have been done about her…a lot of them wanted her dead." Pause. "And, as crazy as the whole idea sound, I just really want to know how they survived it."

Abby's eyes widened. "Wait, are you telling me…?"

"My baby is half-vampire, half-witch. And I'm really sorry, but I don't have time to explain it all to you right now."

As Abby watched Bonnie leave, she felt her heart sink into her stomach as she wondered just what her daughter had managed to get herself into.

Bonnie stepped out onto the front porch, closing Abby's front door behind her. This visit hadn't exactly cleared her head, but she knew deep down that Abby was right—she wasn't her parents and she could, she  _would_ be better.

"Ready to go home?" Enzo asked when Bonnie got back into the driver's seat of her Prius.

"Nope," Bonnie replied, shaking her head. "There's one more stop I need to make."

"Bonnie," Enzo said, watching as she fumbled with her keys. "You haven't slept in over a day and you're not thinking straight."

"I'm fine," she said stubbornly, shaking her head.

"Bonnie, at least let me drive."

"What, so you can take me straight back to Mystic Falls? No. Not yet."

"Bonnie—"

"Look, I'm doing the best I can, okay? I'm trying to figure out the best way to get out of this whole mess alive and so that my son doesn't feel like he's better off not being born!"

Enzo fell silent.

* * *

It was a miracle the steering wheel didn't break off, he was gripping it so tightly. His foot pressed harder on the gas pedal, driving the odometer to nearly a hundred.

Damon couldn't even begin to sort out the thoughts in his head.

Bonnie was going to die. He was going to leave his son and die as well.

His first instinct was to deny the reality of it all. He was a shitty person who had done—who still did—a lot of shitty things, but he wouldn't just abandon his son…except, he would. If he honestly believed it was for the best, he would.

Things had to be different. They would be. One way or another, he was going to make sure of that.

But first, he needed to find Bonnie.

When he finally reached Abby's, he could tell she was already gone because there was no trace of her stupid little Prius.

 _I'm gonna kill Enzo for not keeping her here like I told him to,_ Damon thought.

Although, to be fair, he knew that when Bonnie put her mind to something, she was damn near unstoppable.

Abby looked surprised when she opened up the front door.

"Where's Bonnie?" Damon asked without preamble. There was no point and no time in bothering with pointless greetings and stupid small talk.

"Bonnie? She said she was heading to New Orleans…she thought maybe Klaus Mikaelson could help her," Abby told him. "She didn't tell you where she was going?"

"She didn't tell  _anybody,"_ He replied, already turning to leave.

"Are…you're the father, aren't you?" He heard Abby whisper.

Damon paused and turned around to give her a single nod.

"Just…take care of her?"

Damon nodded again, before heading out to continue tracking Bonnie down.


	14. Chapter 14

"Not that you'll bother to listen to me, but given the stories I've heard about this lot, about Klaus in particular, do you really think that seeking them out will help you?" Enzo asked as Bonnie stared determinedly through the front windshield.

"Klaus gave his blood to help Damon, didn't he?"

Granted, it was for some future, unspecified favor, but that was something she'd deal with later if they actually managed to live through this.

"I really screwed it all up even more, didn't I?" Dominic muttered, not meeting anyone's eyes.

"No," Stefan said, shaking his head and moving closer to his nephew. "And, trust me, I understand wanting to do whatever it takes to save your mother. Damon does, too."

"I…I didn't mean to hurt her. My mom, I mean."

"We know that," Caroline replied. "And, trust me, she does too. She's just scared. She didn't exactly have the best parents and she's been through a lot of scary supernatural things and she really wants better for you. Damon will bring her home and we'll find a way to make everything okay for  _all_ of us," she reassured him.

Taking a deep breath, Dominic nodded.

"Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but all this stress has me starving," Caroline said, switching up the subject. "Let's go find something to eat."

* * *

Bonnie steps out of her car and cautiously makes her way to the Abattoir. The sun was just starting to rise and, since she hasn't slept in nearly twenty-four hours, she was  _exhausted._

That didn't matter right now, though.

She didn't bother to try and make Enzo stay in the car. He would continue to argue with her, just like he argued with her the whole way here and she just didn't have the energy for it right now.

The courtyard was completely empty without a trace of a single person. She didn't know whether to start banging on doors or just yell out Klaus's name. Whatever got him out here and talking to her…

"Is there a particular reason you're lurking around here at the crack of dawn?" Klaus asked from behind her, startling Bonnie a bit.

"I…" she paused. "Is anyone else around here?"

"What does that matter?"

She wasn't so sure if it was a good idea to let anybody overhear the conversation they're about to have...

"I know Caroline gave you a bit of a crash course on what's been happening back in Mystic Falls when that witch threw me and Damon in some alternate dimension."

Klaus raised his eyebrows.

"Okay, what the hell, might as well cut to the chase," Bonnie muttered more to herself than to anyone. "I'm pregnant, which I'm sure you can tell because of vampire super-hearing and all that. Damon's the father, so this baby is a witch-vampire hybrid and that's what that crazy witch from the future was trying to stop. And now her coven—in the present—is breathing down my neck, trying to make sure that this baby isn't born."

If Klaus was surprised, he did a hell of a job at hiding. Instead he hummed and took a seat at a table, lacing his fingers together thoughtfully.

"And that brings you here because…?" He asked.

"Don't play dumb, Klaus," Bonnie replied flatly, taking a seat across from him. Enzo stayed standing behind her, arms crossed and observing. "You're a lot of things, but you're not stupid. A lot of people want your daughter dead…how did you make it through?"

"Well, it certainly helped that I am unkillable, for most intents and purposes," he reminded her. "You, however, a very killable."

"I remember you had a hell of a time when you were trying to kill me," Bonnie shot back. "And you might be pretty damn durable and I'm sure your daughter has all sorts of powers because she was witch, werewolf, and vampire blood in her, but she's doesn't have the same level of invincibility you do."

"You want to know how I made sure my daughter survived? The same way I survived a millennia before I broke my mother's curse." He leaned forward and Bonnie resisted the urge to lean back. "You've got to be willing to let the rest of the world burn as an expense of your survival, as an expense of the survival of your child. You learn to play politics, you learn to fight dirty, and you become ruthless. That is how you survive being an abomination in the supernatural world."

She doesn't know what sort of response she had been expecting. Either way, she knew it would be unsettling.

"You might want to keep an eye or two out," Bonnie told him, standing up. "If things go south in Mystic Falls…well, from what I've heard, things get bad enough to make you and your family go completely AWOL."

Klaus raised his eyebrows at that. Clearly she had caught his attention, which is what she intended to do. If nothing else, it might make him consider lending a hand before things got too bad.

She didn't bother with any goodbyes as she turned and left.

"So that's Klaus, huh?" Enzo said as they stepped outside. "I can see why you all like him so much. He's a party."

She found herself breaking into laughter at that. It really wasn't that funny, but to her sleep exhausted brain, it was  _hilarious._

Her laughter is cut short when she caught sight of Damon standing by the curb, leaning against his vintage Camaro.

_Well, shit…_

"Get in," Damon said brusquely, pushing off the car and wrenching open the passenger door.

"Damon—"

"Get. In.  _Now."_

Bonnie bristled at that.

"Excuse you? In what world do you think you have  _any_ right to order me around like that?"

"In the same world where you think it's okay to just take off when you  _know_ how much danger you're in. When it's not  _just_ yourself you're putting in danger." He gave a pointed look at her stomach.

Bonnie looked down a fidgeted a little.

"So, get in the car or I am going to pick you up and put in there myself."

"But my car—"

"Enzo can drive it."

Bonnie looked back and forth between Enzo and Damon. She was not looking forward to a long car ride with Damon…but, she'd have to face the music sooner or later.

With a sigh, she tossed her keys over at Enzo before slowly sitting down in Damon's passenger seat.

When Damon joined her in the car, she expected him to let her have it right then and there. Instead, he quietly clenched his jaw and tightly gripped the steering wheel as he drove.

"I panicked, okay?" She said, her voice cracking a little bit. "The idea of having a child is scary enough, but all of this? I'm terrified…more than I've ever been, which is saying a lot because we have dealt with some of the most impossible, most horrible things."

He doesn't respond to her. What was he supposed to say? That she really should be terrified because apparently she was going to die in the future? That she should be terrified because their son, just like her, had decided to shoulder the burdens of the world at the expense of his own life and happiness?

"I know," he replied, his voice strained. "But…you can't do these sorts of things. Not now."

Bonnie looked down.

"He hates us, doesn't he?" She asked, trying to blink the tears away. "Our son hates us."

"No, he hates me. You, he loves," Damon said. "He's trying to protect you. He doesn't want to lose you."

"I'm his mother. I'm supposed to protect him and clearly I've failed at it that time around." Pause. "Do…do you think we stand a chance at all? That we can make things any better this time around? Klaus told me that I have to pretty much be willing to let the world burn down so that Dominic would survive, but…"

"I don't know," Damon answered honestly. "But we are going to try our damndest to change it."

* * *

She drifted off during the car ride without meaning to and awoke when Damon was unsnapping her seatbelt and lifting her out of the car.

"I can walk, you know," she murmured, still half-asleep.

"Yeah, you'll fall over the second I put you down," he scoffed.

Bonnie hummed, but didn't say anything. She really was exhausted, so she might as well milk it.

"Oh, thank God," she heard Caroline say in relief.

"Sorry, Care," Bonnie mumbled.

"You'll be hearing it from me when you wake up!" She heard Caroline call as Damon headed up the stairs.

"You know we really do need to talk about everything," Bonnie told Damon softly as she kicked off her shoes once he set her down on her bed. "I mean…we're having a baby."

"I know," Damon replied. "We'll talk after you sleep."

* * *

There was silence in the living room as Damon descended the stairs.

"You two should talk," Stefan told his brother and his nephew. "We're heading to bed," he said, taking Caroline by the wrist.

Silence fell once again.

Damon walked over to the other side to pour himself a heart glass of bourbon. Pausing, he poured another and offered it to Dominic. He hesitantly took it.

"I know I hurt her," Dominic said. "I didn't meant to."

"She'll forgive you…I'm sure she already has. She's forgiven me for worse," Damon replied. "But I suppose you know that already."

Silence again.

"I can't…" Damon began. "Look, I don't know what to say about what I did in your future, except that I want it to be different this time around. Bonnie does, too." Pause. "I'm not going to stand here and tell you I'm a good person. You're old enough and you've been enough to see through the bullshit. But I do want to be a good father."

* * *

"They found your friend?" Jo Loughlin asked sleepily when Alaric hung up the phone and returned to bed.

"Yeah. I guess she just got really nervous after finding out she's pregnant," Ric replied.

Jo bit her lip. She had been trying to figure out a good time to bring it all up, but time was becoming more and more pressing.

She may have locked her magic away decades ago, but her spidey senses, so to speak, still tingle. And when she finally gave into it and decided to start piecing together everything that was happening…well, she was not liking what she was finding, to put it mildly.

"I think I know how to help your friend," she told Ric. His eyes snapped open, any thoughts of going to sleep clearly vanished.

* * *

"Hey," Bonnie said as she saw Damon leaning against the doorway. He had promised they would talk more, but she had a feeling that it'd be more like him actually yelling at her for what she did.

And she understood why. What she did was very unlike her and done in a fit of panic, but it was stupid and unnecessarily reckless.

"I'm sorry," she said, turning back to the vanity and wrapping her arms around herself. "I should have said it sooner, but I am. I'm sorry about running away, about not telling anyone where I was. It was stupid. Especially for me. I just…I don't know how to handle any of this."

"I don't think any of us do," Damon replied.

"Do you think we can do it?" She asked, finally turning to face him. "If we survive this, do you think we could be good parents? I mean, we obviously didn't plan any of this…do you even want—"

"Yeah, I do," he interjected, sitting on her bed. He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and tugged her gently to sit next to him. "My father…" he trailed off, letting out a small scoff, not even knowing where to begin. I was never good enough for him, never fit the description of what he  _thought_ a man should be." Pause. "He's actually a big part of the reason me and Stefan are even still around…he shot both of us when he find out we were consorting with Katherine and trying to save her. Two dead sons was much better than having to tell the other Founders about his shame, apparently."

He looked at Bonnie and saw her eyes widen and her lips parts as she lets out a small gasp and brings a hand up to cover her mouth. He got up and crouched in front of her, pulling her hand from her mouth and holding it in a light grip before reaching for her other hand.

"Here's the thing: If nothing else, I'm going to do whatever it takes to be a  _great_ father to spite my own. And you are going to be an  _amazing_ mother. You've done so much for all of us, care about all of us even when we don't deserve it. There's no way you won't be a great mother. And us? We're going to figure out a way to survive this and we are going to raise a safe, happy son to spite everyone who wants to take that away from us and away from him."

Trembling a little, Bonnie nodded. Then she reached out, hugging Damon and hanging onto him tightly.

Whatever came next, they would figure it out together.

* * *

"I assume she decided not to take my offer?"

"No," future Jacqueline interjected before her present counterpart could say anything. "I had thought perhaps with the right push, she could be convinced, but I'm not entirely surprised, either. We gave it an honest effort and tried to do it your way, now it's time to eliminate them. We cannot keep giving them time to plan and prepare. We need to be swift and decisive once and for all."

"Actually, I think a different plan is in order," Jacqueline's father replied. "One that you are unneeded for." And with that, he stood up and make a quick motion with his hand.

With a loud  _crack,_ the older Jacqueline's head jerked to the side. She feel in a crumpled heap on the floor, her neck bent at an unnatural angle.

Jacqueline couldn't help the shriek that left her. Covering her mouth, she stared down at the body before looking up at her father in horror. It was indescribably unnerving how he could so easily kill someone that looked like her— _was_ her—without even seeming to think twice about it.

"That was necessary," her father told her. "We both know she was mad and would have only impeded any further plans we had."

 _I'm pretty sure she's not the only crazy one,_  Jacqueline thought, still staring wide-eyed.

"Your earlier assumptions were correct," her father continued. "It is all about power. It's how you stay alive and avoid subjugation in an unforgiving supernatural world. You are next in line to be leader of this coven and that is a fact you  _must_ understand. Now, obviously I can't  _force_  Bonnie Bennett to join us, but there is an alternative."

Jacqueline was tempted to just turn around and leave. She didn't want to know anymore. She didn't want any part of this.

"We'll take that child of hers and raise it as one of us. Being a vampire and a witch, especially a Bennett…well, there's no telling what sort of power he could potentially hold if trained right."


	15. Chapter 15

"Hey," Bonnie said softly, standing in the doorway of Dominic's room, Damon standing behind her.

"Hi," Dominic said nervously, turning to face her. "I'm sorry…I—"

"Don't worry about it," Bonnie replied, moving to him and pulling him into a hug. "We'll figure it out somehow. It's all going to be okay. I promise."

Dominic looked over Bonnie's shoulder to Damon who gave him a nod.

"Hey, hey," Caroline practically shouted, nearly running into the room. "That doctor Ric's been seeing—Jo—she's a witch, or  _was,_ or something like that. Whatever. Either way, she thinks she can help."

And that's how they end up gathered in the living.

While Bonnie wasn't overly familiar with Jo Laughlin, she had seen her before. Whitmore College had a partnership program with Mystical Falls Memorial so that pre-med students had the opportunity to gain some hands-on experience and Jo had been one of the cooperating doctors.

"You were a witch?" Bonnie asked her.

"I was. I locked away my powers over twenty years ago. I was a part of the Gemini coven," Jo replied.

"What, the Gemini coven?" Bonnie hadn't heard about them years, but they were definitely hard to forget after what happened last time some of their members were around. "The same one Luke and Liv are a part of?"

"They're my younger siblings, actually."

"Oh."

"My coven might be willing to help you out. That witch, the one who came from the future, I know she messed with dimensions and, chance are, that's how your pregnancy was even possible, Bonnie," Jo explained. "And my coven doesn't like it when someone starts playing with something so dangerous."

"And why is that?" Damon asked, clearly suspicious.

Jo sighed.

"To oversimplify it: My insane twin brother, Kai, slaughtered all my other siblings and cut my spleen out with a hunting knife. My father, the leader of the Gemini, imprisoned him in a pocket dimension, probably similar to the one future Jacqueline had placed you two in."

Bonnie couldn't help the way her eyes widened and her mouth hanging open slightly at that.

"All this time traveling and playing around with dimensions and other tricks this future witch has been up to could potentially cause us problems. It could mean Kai potentially escaping," Jo explained. "That's why they were freaking out when the Other Side started to collapse all those years ago." Pause. "Not to mention, your grandmother, Sheila Bennett is the one who helped my father lock Kai away, Bonnie. They owe her, but since she's no longer alive, it's  _you_ they owe. Make sure they know that."

Bonnie thought back to what Klaus had told her about playing politics. Having another witch coven, especially one as powerful as the Gemini could be  _huge._

"Okay," Bonnie said. "How do we go about this? What do we do?"

"Hold up," Damon interjected before Jo could respond. "Considering everything that happened when they sent dear old Twitches after Stefan and Elena—"

"Excuse us," Bonnie interrupted with a strained smile before getting up. She grabbed Damon by the sleeve and dragged him toward the kitchen.

"Do not ruin this for us," Bonnie hissed.

"Ruin it? How do we know they won't decide that a vampire-witch baby isn't a problem, either?" Damon snapped back.

"Because, what it actually comes down to at the end of the day is power," Bonnie responded. "And right now, Jacqueline's coven is trying to build up as much power as possible, so all we need to do is convince the Gemini that they're better siding with us."

Damon didn't look very persuaded by that.

"Think about it," she urged him. "Instead of just us, we could have an entire coven backing us up. And they must have connections, too, which means they could other covens to help us as well."

"Uh, just as an FYI, literally everyone out here, vampire or not can you hear you two," Dominic said poking his head in the kitchen doorway. "Also, I think Mom is right on this one."

Bonnie smiled, her heart warming at Dominic calling her 'Mom.' Damon, on the other hand, didn't look so thrilled.

"Look," Bonnie said, reaching out to take Damon's hands. "We agreed that we'd figure things out together, so I won't do this if you won't agree. But the very least you can do is actually considering it."

Damon sighed, but nodded.

"Okay," Bonnie said to Jo, walking back into the living room. "We're on the fence about this, but if we did agree, what would be the process?"

"I'd arrange a meeting for you," Jo replied. "You have to fly out to Portland and present your case to our council. Then, they would decide if they will help you or not and what sort of assistance they will provide."

Bonnie nodded and gave Damon a pointed look as he opened his mouth to say something that was undoubtedly snarky. It was hard to miss the slight glare Ric gave him, too.

"Okay, we'll definitely think about it," Bonnie told Jo.

Jo nodded and got up to leave, Ric rising with her. But, turning back to Bonnie, she asked, "Have you seen a doctor yet to start prenatal care?" she asked Bonnie.

"No. It's literally been like two days since I found out I was pregnant," Bonnie answered.

"I know that I'm not on OB/GYN," Jo said. "But, during my residency, I did a lot of those rounds because I seriously considered specializing before I decided to join the army as a medic. And since I'm sure you could use discretion in your case for now…" She pulled a card out of her purse and scribbled something on the back. "My office number is on the front, but my cell is on the back."

"Thank you," Bonnie said genuinely. "I really do appreciate this."

* * *

About a week later, Bonnie and Damon found themselves in an examination room with Jo, Bonnie dressed in an uncomfortable hospital gown.

"Alright," Jo said, pulling the needle out of Bonnie's arm. "I'll go test your blood myself and be back with the results and then we can do an ultrasound."

"Am I the only one who finds it kinda weird that she seems to know how to do everything?" Damon asked when Jo left the room.

"She was an army doctor who, as far as I know did at least one tour in Afghanistan, Damon," Bonnie pointed out. "I'm sure she picked up how to do a lot of things. Besides, machines mostly do the work when it comes to testing blood, it's just a matter of translating those results."

They had debated whether seeing Jo for prenatal care was a good idea or not.

Damon insisted that for all they knew Jo could be plotting against them. Bonnie pointed out that if that was the case, she probably wouldn't have revealed herself to have once been a part of the Gemini coven.

"Have you given any thought about Jo's offer to put us in contact with the Gemini coven, Damon?" Bonnie pressed.

"Do you honestly believe it's a good idea?"

"I get being cautious over it all," Bonnie replied. "I really do. I'm not stupid. I know the Gemini will serve their own interests over ours in a heartbeat. And I'm not naïve enough to think they won't have their own reservations about this baby…but for now, they'd probably think of us as the lesser of two evils."

"And what happens when this business with the psycho coven is over and done with and they turn on us? It'd put us right back at square one," Damon argued.

"I don't know," Bonnie said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "We don't exactly have a whole lot of options."

Silence fell upon them.

"Okay," Jo said, reentering the room and wheeling a machine in. "I managed to sneak this out with no one noticing me. Hopefully none of the OBs will be looking for this particular one. Oh, and everything in your blood—iron levels, hormone levels—is looking good so far."

"Thanks you for all of this," Bonnie said sincerely.

"Of course," Jo replied with a smile. "Now, just lay back…" She grabbed a blanket from a closet to drape across Bonnie's lower half. "This'll probably feel a little uncomfortable, but if it hurts let me know."

Bonnie took a deep breath and nodded.

She wasn't nervous. The relatively healthy sixteen year old back at home told her that, medically speaking, her pregnancy should be fine for the most part.

No, instead, she was actually excited.

She found herself jerked out of herself when a thumping noise feels the room.

"There's the heartbeat," Jo said. "And it sounds good."

Bonnie couldn't help the wide grin that spread across her face. Everyone else had already gotten to hear the heartbeat since they had supernatural hearing and all, but now it was finally her turn.

"And here he is," Jo added, gesturing on the monitor. "I know there isn't much to look at…since you're only about seven or eight weeks along, not much has had a chance to develop yet, but in another two months or so, we'll be able to see more."

Jo was right. There wasn't much to look at yet. Honestly, if you didn't know to look for  _something, something,_ you probably would have completely missed it. But there he was. There was her baby.

She looked over at Damon who was intently examining the image on the monitor.

"I'll print an image of this for you," Jo offered.

Sitting in the passenger seat of Damon's car, Bonnie finds herself tracing the small outline of the fetus on the black and white image in her hand.

"If you really believe that the Gemini will help, then I'll trust you on this one," Damon said, breaking the silence.

Bonnie looked over at him surprise.

"But we need to have a contingency plan, okay?" He added.

"Of course," she replied.

She looked back down at the picture in her hand before pulling out her cellphone and dialing Jo's number.

* * *

"How did it go?" Caroline asked eagerly, almost bowling them over as they walk through the front door. "I mean, I'm sure it went fine because your grown son is sitting right there," she gestured towards Dominic, "But…"

"Right here," Bonnie said, showing Caroline the sonogram and pointing out the small fetus.

"Awww, look," Caroline said with a wide smile, showing it to Stefan.

"Also," Bonnie said, plopping down on the couch next to Dominic. "Me and Damon have decided to go ahead and have Jo set up a meeting with the Gemini."

"If they end up being a problem as well when it's all over with, then we'll just have to find a way to deal with them," Damon added, pouring himself a drink.

"Well, I've never been to Portland before," Stefan replied with a shrug.

* * *

_Everything hurt and she couldn't quite tell where she was._

_All she knew was that she was lying down and there was so much blood. And, God, did it really heard._

" _He looks healthy," she heard a woman's voice say. "She on the other hand will probably bleed out within the hour."_

_She swore she could hear a baby crying, but it sounded distant. Actually, any noise seemed faint, as if cotton had been stuffed in her ears._

" _Please," Bonnie gasped out with what little strength she had left. "Please don't. Please don't hurt my baby."_

" _We won't," the woman whispered in her ear. "He's going to be a powerful asset to us."_

Bonnie woke up screaming.

Damon got to her first, the others following behind him.

"What happened?" He asked, grabbing her by the shoulders and looking her up and down.

"I—" she began, but she cut herself off, shaking her head. She looked past Damon at the others who had gathered in the doorway in concern.

She didn't know what to say about what she had just seen, what she had just felt.

"I think I had a vision," Bonnie whispered, focusing on Damon, her body trembling. "I don't think they want to kill him anymore." She placed a hand on her stomach. "They want to take him from us."

* * *

Nobody went back to sleep that night.

It didn't help matters, either, when Jo came that morning to tell them that it'll be a month before the Gemini will see them.

"A month? Really? Do they need that time to pull their heads out of their a—"

"Damon," Bonnie warned tiredly.

"Their claim is that they're busy and preparations need to be made and whatnot. But honestly? They're jackasses who just want to make you all squirm a bit," Jo admitted with a wry grin.

"And these are the people we're seeking help from?" Dominic asked dryly. He looked over at Bonnie, "On second thought, Mom, they're not inspiring a lot of confidence from me."

"Ugh, you sound just like  _him,_ you know," Bonnie said nodding at Damon.

"Should I be offended by that?" Damon asked, placing a plate full of pancakes in front of her. Bonnie looked down at the little vampire faces he had created and rolled her eyes, smiling despite herself.

Then, she was hit by a wave of nausea and it was all she could do to barely make it to the sink before she vomits.

"Okay," Damon said sardonically. "Now I'm definitely offended."

"And here I thought maybe I'd get lucky and catch a break and skip out on morning sickness," Bonnie groaned. She grabbed a glass to rinse her mouth out with water.

"Yeah, sorry 'bout that," Dominic chimed in with a chagrined smile.

Bonnie laughed a little before moving to put the tea kettle on. Hopefully some peppermint tea would calm her stomach down so she could eat some of those pancakes.

"I really can't thank you enough for everything you've been doing for us, Jo," Bonnie said with a soft, sweet smile.

"I know how important you all are to Ric and this whole thing is just insanity," Jo replied, shaking her head. "I'm just sorry the council is dragging their asses on this."

"Well, now I'm pretty sure that they want to take Dominic from us instead of stopping him from being born," Bonnie said heavily. "And as horrific and terrifying the thought of that is, at least it buys us more time than we thought we had."

Jo gives her a small, somber, but sympathetic smile.

* * *

"What's wrong?" Damon asked Bonnie much later that night as she fidgeted in the doorway of his bedroom.

"I—" she stopped herself. "Never mind. I'm just being stupid and overdramatic." She turned to leave, but Damon easily looped his fingers around her wrist, stopping her.

"Bon, what is it?"

"It's just that…after that dream I had last night…I'm  _terrified._ I could hear,  _feel_ everything that was happening and the idea that somebody wants to take our son away from us and use him…"

"Come on," he said, tugging her towards his bed.

Bonnie hesitated a little before climbing in. He did the same, settling next to her.

They laid there side by side for a bit, silent and not touching in the dark. Then, Bonnie took his hand and placed it on top of her stomach, entwining her fingers with his.

She knew that Damon couldn't feel anything. The baby was too small and she didn't even have the tiniest hint of a baby bump yet. But she knew Damon could hear his heartbeat and she found something comfortable in that simple touch.

"I die, don't I?" Bonnie asked him suddenly. It was a thought that had been nagging at her ever since Damon had brought her back from New Orleans, but she never found the courage to actually say anything. "In Dominic's future, I die. That's what he was skirting around about, right?"

"Yeah. He told me you died when he was twelve," Damon replied. He knew there was no point in lying about it.

She silently nodded.

"I'm not scared of dying. At least not in the sense of what'll happen to  _me_ if I die," she told him. "I mean, as sad as it sounds, it's sort of a 'been there, done that' type thing by now." Pause. "I'm more scared of what I'll be leaving behind. He deserves to grow up with people that love him and want what's best for him and the idea of what they'd do to him, what they turn him into…"

Damon's fingers squeezed hers lightly.

"If something does happen to me—"

"Don't," he interrupted. "It won't. Not this time."

"You don't know that," Bonnie said. "If something does happen to me, make sure you're there for him. He's going to need you the most. He's going to need to know how much we both love him."

Damon found himself wondering if his future self had made this promise only to break it.

"Of course," he replied, ignoring the knot that was forming in his throat. "But we already decided that things were going to be different one way or another, that we'd figure it out, so stop thinking like this."

"I know," she said, turning on her side to face him. Their hands were still entwined, lightly brushing her stomach with her movements. "You're right." She scooted closer curling into him slightly.

Following that night, she practically moves into Damon's room and nobody questions it.


	16. Chapter 16

The month passes by quietly until it was time for them to get on a plane to Portland.

Apparently the Gemini coven owned some huge building that they used as an office of sorts…it reminded Bonnie a bit of town hall back in Mystic Falls and, quite frankly, it was ridiculous as hell. As she sat in the designated waiting room with Damon and Dominic, she couldn't help but feel like she was going to court.

Although, in a way she supposed she kind of was.

"Just remember to breathe," Jo had reminded her right before they had left for the meeting. "Oh, and don't get angry. And don't be a smartass. They really don't like that kind of thing." That comment was obviously directed more towards Damon than anyone.

The vampire in question had simply rolled his eyes at that.

When they were called in, the council were seated at a large, long banquet-style table in the front of the room. About two and a half yards away from the table, were three very uncomfortable looking seats.

 _Forget feeling like going to court,_ Bonnie thought dryly as she slowly settled down into one of the hard wooden seats. She hoped she looked a lot calmer than she actually felt. _This is starting to feel more like the Inquisition._

Brief introductions were made before Joshua Parker, leader of the Gemini and Jo's father, said, "Now what case have you brought before us."

To Bonnie's surprise, it was Dominic who started speaking first, explaining who he was, where he had come from and why.

When he finished, there was a long pause before another council member, an elderly man who reminded Bonnie vaguely of Grumpy from _Snow White,_ spoke up.

"And why should this become _our_ problem?"

Damon let out a scoff, but Bonnie quickly jumped in before he could say what was really on his mind.

"Because that other coven is power-hungry," Bonnie said. "When they get started, do you really think they'll stop with just us? They're using this as an excuse. This is a stepping stone to declare some huge supernatural war so that they can come out on top," she continued. "They'll come after _you_ and other covens next and you'll be given the choice to either acquiesce to them or die. And, to be fair, from what I've seen and heard from your coven, you could probably hold your own against them…but what about other covens? What happens when they have the combine strength of two, three, four, or who knows how many covens?"

Pause.

"Not to mention that this," Bonnie added, placing a hand over her stomach, "Would have never been possible if they didn't decide to start messing around with different dimensions…who knows what they could let out?"

That hint was less than subtle, but it had certainly caught Joshua Parker's attention, judging by the look on his face.

Another council member stood up. She was a small woman who looked to be in her late sixties or early seventies. Her face seemed kind, but Bonnie knew better than to be fooled by those types of facades.

She tried not to tense up as the woman came all the way around the table to approach them. She stopped before Dominic, studying him intently. Then, she moved onto Bonnie.

"May I?" She asked, a hand hovering over Bonnie's stomach.

Bonnie's first instinct was to tell her hell no. She didn't know this woman or what she might do.

"No offense, but if you try anything funny, you'll end up with one less arm than you did before," Bonnie warned her. Whether that was a threat to be carried out by herself or Damon was up for grabs.

Not fazed by the threat at all and actually smiling a little, the woman carefully placed her weathered hands over Bonnie's stomach.

At just under three months, there had yet to be any outwardly appearing signs of her pregnancy. Well, she was starting to get the tiniest of bumps, but it was virtually undetectable and could just as easily be a little weight gain.

The woman kept her hands there for several moments before finally removing them. Bonnie had no idea what she had been seeking, but the woman appeared to have found it.

The council bombarded them with more questions and then they were finally left with a, "We will take this into our consideration and let you know our final decision."

"And how long will that take?" Damon asked, an edge to his voice.

"As long as necessary," Joshua replied flatly.

"Thank you," Bonnie said quickly. She grabbed both Dominic and Damon by the sleeves and dragged them out of there. Judging by the look on their faces, they had some choice words they had wanted to say.

"They're not going to help us," Damon said once they were out.

"We don't know that," Bonnie replied. "Besides, it's not like we have a lot of options here."

Damon pursed his lips, but didn't say anything. Dominic was equally as quiet.

"Okay, well, I'm starving, so why don't we grab the others and get some lunch?" Bonnie suggested.

She tried to ignore the discontented feeling the meeting had left in the pit of her stomach.

* * *

"So, I had asked Jo about that one woman—y'know, the creepy one who got a little to touchy feely? Apparently her name is Tarryn and she's a super-powerful seer," Bonnie told Damon later that night in their hotel room.

"What was trying to see?" Damon asked with a snort. "Dominic literally told her everything," he pointed out.

"Maybe to verify that we were telling the truth?" Bonnie suggested. "Or maybe she saw something different. Maybe things have already changed. Maybe they're already becoming better."

Damon didn't respond. Instead, he reached over and placed his hand on her stomach.

"You're starting to get a little bump."

"It's so small you can't even notice it yet," Bonnie replied with a small smile. "It's probably more weight gain than anything right now, to tell you the truth. You think morning sickness would curb my appetite, but I can't stop eating everything I get my hands on."

Damon chuckled a little, rubbing his thumb in a soothing manner across her belly.

"We should probably get some stuff done while things are quiet," Bonnie told him. "Like setting up a nursery and all that."

Damon hummed in agreement.

"At least we don't have to stress over picking a name…although, I wonder where we got it from. I don't know anyone named Dominic and, to be honest, if I didn't know it already, I'm not sure it's a name I would even think of. Do you have any idea where it came from?"

Damon paused for a moment.

"One of our house slaves, Cecily, was me and Stefan's nursemaid growing up. She was like a second mother to us and when our actual mother died, she basically became a surrogate mother to us. She had a son named Dominic, who died from diphtheria when he was eight or nine. She never had any other children."

Bonnie blinked, not knowing what to say.

"My father had basically forced me into joining the Confederate army. I never believed in any of it. States' rights, slavery…it was all bullshit. I wanted to desert, but never really got the nerve until I met this stranger who somehow convinced to do it. And I did. Days later my entire regiment go slaughtered in Gettysburg."

She can't help the little gasp that escapes her mouth at that.

"I returned home. My father probably would have beat me bloody like he did when I was boy, but I was grown now and he was starting to get afraid that one day I might actually hit back. He'd been planning on disowning me, though. I mean, he'd constantly threatened it, but this time he'd really meant it, but I guess Stefan must have talked him down. Giuseppe made sure that everyone knew just how ashamed of me was." Pause. "Cecily told me she was proud of me for finally standing up for what I believed in, though. I think it was actually the first time anyone ever told me they were proud of me."

Bonnie reached down to entwine her fingers in his. "I'm proud of you, too," she told him. "You've come such a long way from that…person you were when we first met."

He squeezed her fingers lightly.

* * *

Before they left Portland, Bonnie asked Jo if there was any way she could meet with Tarryn again…only, this time without the council.

Damon thought it was a waste of time, but Bonnie wouldn't be deterred.

"Jo had mentioned you were a powerful seer," Bonnie began, resisting the urge to nervously tap her fingers around the tea cup Tarryn had set in front of her. "I just…can I ask what you saw at that meeting when you touched me?"

"The power of foresight is so overrated," the older witch told her. "You of all people should realize by now that the future is always in motion, always changing, never set in stone."

Damon didn't bother to cover up his scoffing and eye rolling.

"I know, but I just…" She began tapping her fingers against the porcelain cup.

"Just keep fighting," Tarryn advised her, carefully and gently pulling Bonnie's fingers away from the delicate tea cup.

Part of Bonnie wanted to roll her eyes. That's all anyone seemed to tell her lately. Just keep going, keep fighting.

And it's not that they were wrong about it…

It's just that she wanted… _needed_ …something more concrete than that. She needed to know that everything was going to be okay, that they would miraculously make it through this like they always had.

But Tarryn was right. There were never any guarantees in this life and Bonnie knew that better than anyone.

And so, even if the Gemini failed to offer their assistance, Bonnie would find a way to move and figure something else out.

Keep going, keep fighting. That's what there was to do.


	17. Chapter 17

"Bon, I think it's time that we go shopping for maternity clothes," Caroline told her over breakfast one morning.

"I know," Bonnie sighed. At four and a half months, her baby bump was definitely noticeable and her clothes were becoming uncomfortably tight. "But between trying to solve our massive problem and everything else…"

"Great, so we can spend a day out," the blonde replies, making it clear that this declaration is final and irrevocable.

Bonnie mouthed the words 'help' at Dominic who was halfway through a piece of toast. He conveniently pretended as if he didn't noticed.

 _Little traitor,_ Bonnie thought with a sigh, shoving a large helping of eggs into her mouth. While the odds of her keeping food down was still fifty-fifty, her appetite was growing.

"You feeling okay?" Caroline asked.

"Yeah, I'm good," Bonnie said when she finished swallowing her food. "I just have a lot on my mind right now that goes beyond the usual supernatural hell that is our lives. All the checkups Jo has been doing have been turning out fine. Not exactly looking forward to waddling around when I get super big in a few months. I'm still trying to decide on a hospital birth or an at-home birth…a hospital would be best just in case there's any sudden complications, but it'd be easy for someone to slip in. With a home birth, it's a little more private and easier to keep others out. Then…"

Vampire hearing or no, it was not easy to keep up with Bonnie as she began talking a mile a minute.

"And you still haven't heard a word from the Gemini yet, either?"

"No," Bonnie grumbled. "I mean, I get not making a decision lightly, but this is getting fucking ridiculous."

Caroline side and shook her head in shared frustration. "Well, we are going to try and forget about all of that for a few hours while we do some shopping."

"Do we have to?" Bonnie groaned. It wasn't that going shopping with Caroline was  _that_ bad. It was that when she was in public, strangers suddenly decided they were entitled to invade her personal space and touch her now obviously pregnant stomach. And that certainly didn't help with her or Damon's nerves when she was in such danger. He had almost ripped more than one person's arm off, including some poor old lady.

"Yep. Oh, and I have a surprise for you that just rolled up in the driveway," Caroline added with a hundred watt smile.

Bonnie raised an eyebrow at her, wondering what the hell she was talking about before looking over at Dominic who seemed every bit as clueless as her.

Absent-mindedly rubbing a hand along her little baby bump, Bonnie looked suspiciously at Caroline before getting up and heading to the front door. Pulling it open, she was confronted with Elena and Tyler coming up the walkway.

"Oh my God!" Bonnie exclaimed, rushing out to meet them.

Elena squealed and dropped her bag, running to embrace Bonnie.

"Oh my God! Look at you!" She exclaimed, pulling back a bit to look at Bonnie up and down.

"How'd—"

"Caroline called, of course, and filled me in," Elena said, linking her arm with Bonnie's and pulling her back towards the entrance of the Boardinghouse. "And I was a little upset that I wasn't called sooner, but I can't even begin to imagine how much you guys have had on your plate lately."

"Understatement of the century," Bonnie replied wryly.

"Yay, now we can go shopping!" Caroline said, clapping her hand excitedly, practically shoving them back out the door. "I've got Damon's credit card," she added, waving the black plastic around.

"We can wait an hour or two," Bonnie protested. "Elena's been in the car for like twenty hours." Pause. "Does Damon know you have his card?"

"Elena'll live," Caroline said dismissively. "And no, he doesn't know, but seeing as he's the one that knocked you up, he can pay for your new wardrobe." She paused in her manhandling of Elena and Bonnie to address Tyler. "Stefan and Damon should be back soon. Dominic's in the kitchen; you should get acquainted."

She proceeded pushing and pulling Bonnie and Elena down the walkway, leaving Tyler on the front porch, looking very much like a pack mule.

* * *

"This is ridiculous," Bonnie told Caroline who set several massive, completely filled shopping bags down on an empty chair at their table. "I'm going to be pregnant for another four months or so…not four years.

Caroline rolled her eyes and didn't even deign to give Bonnie a response.

"So you and Damon, huh?" Elena asked.

"We're not exactly a thing," Bonnie replied quickly, looking down at her menu. "I don't really know what we are."

"I'm not mad," Elena said quickly. "We've been over for a long time and Tyler and I are so,  _so_ happy. But I do know something happened between you two over those years you were both trapped on the other side."

Bonnie blinked in surprise, rendered speechless. She'd never told anyone and even if Damon had admitted to it…

"He had this way of looking at you after you both came back," Caroline added. "And…you were both just different around each other.

"Huh…" Bonnie murmured. Truth be told, despite everything happening, she hadn't really given the relationship between her and Damon much thought.

They shared a room, a bed,  _a child_. They just were.

"Weird, isn't it? The journeys life takes us on?" Elena said knowingly.

* * *

"What's all this?" Bonnie asked later that afternoon.

Damon had completely cleared out the spare bedroom she had originally been staying in and appeared to be attempting to put together a contraption of sorts.

"Well, I went this morning to buy stuff to attempt to put a nursery together—Stefan decided to tag along because he has no life…" A piece of wood made an ominous crack when he tried to connect it to something else. "I'm starting to get convinced that this crib is more jacked up than a piece of Ikea furniture," Damon said dryly.

"I'm surprised you didn't hire or compel someone to put it all together…or try to pawn it off on Stefan," Bonnie replied with a small grin.

"What? And let him have all the glory? Maybe I want to wear the hero hair for once," He stared at what might have been the leg of the crib. "You know, once upon a time, I was actually pretty handy…of course, back then people actually knew how to put out a quality product."

"Did you also have to hike uphill both ways in the snow with no shoes while suffering from dysentery, too?"

"Yes, actually."

Bonnie snorted, but didn't bother to give a biting retort.

"Elena and Tyler are here," she informed him.

"I know, I already saw Fido. By the way, Caroline is a little kleptomaniac and I sure hope that doesn't rub off on our kid," he added. Another piece of wood made a cracking sound and he dropped everything altogether, clearly giving up on his endeavor.

"I think probably maxed out your credit card, too…she bought enough maternity clothes for an army of pregnant women," Bonnie informed her dryly. "I tried to stop her, but we all know how—"

She cut herself off when she felt a strange flutter in her belly, almost like fingers tickling her. It only took her a brief moment of panicking before she realized exactly what it was. Upon hearing the small noise that escaped her lips, Damon was in front of her in an instant. Concern and worry filled his face, but he didn't dare touch her.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," she assured him quickly. A small smile painted her face as she ran a hand soothingly over her growing bump. "He's kicking now."

With her free hand, she reached out and took Damon by the wrist, carefully placing his hand next to hers. There was a moment of stillness before the fluttering started again. Damon's fingers twitched slightly.

Bonnie smiled up at him. Her heart stuttered a bit when he returned her smile and leaned in towards her. He was a hair's breadth away from her when he suddenly pulled back and looked directly behind her.

Bonnie turned around, facing Dominic whose cheeks were tinged delicately with pink.

"Err, sorry," he said awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. "Alaric called." He was holding Bonnie's cell phone that she had left on her night stand when she came home and was putting her new clothes away.

"The Gemini finally made a decision," he explained. "And they're willing to help us."

Bonnie let out a breath she hadn't even realized she was holding. "Thank God," she murmured.

"They're on their way to tell us more," he added.

* * *

"For now, they're sending about a dozen of the stronger members here to give backup," Jo explained to them that night. "Beyond that, they're getting in touch with other covens they're allied with to give them a sort of state of the union type spiel."

"And who's to say that these other covens won't side against us," Damon asked suspiciously, crossing his arms in front of his chest. It had already been a pain enough to try and get the Gemini on their side, he wasn't really interested in dealing with more witch politics.

"Trust me; none of their allies is brave enough to try and go up against them. That's why their allies. They may not get personally involved, but it's much better than them going against you," Jo replied.

 _She's not wrong about that,_ Bonnie thought, nervously running a hand over her belly.

"They'll be here in a couple hours," Jo added.

"Thank you, Jo," Bonnie said with a small smile.

As she climbed finally climbed into bed later on that night, Bonnie could practically see the thoughts racing around in Damon's head.

"What's wrong?" she asked, shoving a pillow behind her back for some extra support. "We finally got some good news."

"How do we know they won't eventually betray us as well?" Damon asked. "I mean, our track record in that department isn't exactly that great."

"I suppose it could happen. Jo could have been conveniently placed and maybe they want to do the same thing as Jacqueline's coven, maybe they want us all dead, but…" she paused, taking a deep breath. "At the same time, I can't believe that our story is  _that_ sad, that there's not another single person in this world we can trust. Paranoia and pessimism hasn't helped us out a whole lot, so maybe it's time to try a little faith."


End file.
